


^fd^€P^ 









ii^^2 




Class Jj/i?3:^ 



COPVRIGHT DEPOSIT 



OSfrJifA-: 



.j^uSm 












> 






A SOULS 
MEDITATIOlsIS 






COMPILED AND ARRANGED 



B Y 



MRS. J. H. ROOT 




-» ' 5 ^ 5 :> 1 



NINETEEN HUNDRED 



83419 



Library of Conar<»*«« 

DEC 3 1900 






Copyright 1900 

by 

Jean Christie Root 



All rights reser'ved 



.' c^ CK *cc 0,«^c 



Bonnell, Silver ©* Co., 24 W. 22d St., New York 



That I may know him, and the power 
of his resurrection, and the fellowship of 
his sufferings, being made conformable unto 
his death. If by any means I might attain 
unto the resurrection of the dead. — St. Paul, 



Introduction. 

THE writer of the meditations which 
make up this volume was known 
to me during many years, though 
I saw her only from time to time. It 
has seemed right that I should bear some 
witness touching her. 

It shall be this: — Every word that 
in these meditations she wrote, that 
word she meant, in its deepest and 
most comprehensive significance. Less 
than most men and women whom 
I have met, could she at any time 
have written for effect. But in these sen- 
tences she was looking up to God as the 
Great Reality, with not a thought that 
any save He would read the words ; and, 
for much of the time she was looking 
steadily forward to her own death. No 
wonder if the style is austere! Yet how 
human it is, too! ''He had not even a 
dog to be faithful to Him." ''He had no 
pounded ice." 

This is my witness, that here is a book 
that is, above all, sincere; a book in 



6 MEDITATIONS. 

which the gaze is as straight as that of 
a marksman along his rifle-barrel, with 
no side-glances towards a possible au- 
dience. 

And this, in addition, that having 
chosen God as her all, when the end drew 
near she found no cause to regret her 
choice, and that so far as human eye 
could see, she was not disappointed of her 
hope. 

May the words of this book be read in 
the spirit in which they were written. 
James O. S. Huntington, O. H. C. 

July 23, 1900. 



A Victorious Soul. 

IT sometimes seems to the thoughtful 
that there is a widening gulf between 
the earlier and the later followers of 
Christ, and that many modern Chris- 
tians fail to find His full power to sus- 
tain and comfort and guide them in their 
hours of temptation, of sorrow or per- 
plexity, because they do not give them- 
selves fully to Him once for all, and then 
go forward caring above all else to know 
Him, and His full will concerning them. 
The experiences of the past assure us 
that were this consecration ours, nothing, 
neither life nor death, joy nor sorrow, 
wealth nor poverty, friends nor loneliness, 
— nothing, in any height of joy or depth 
of pain or loss would have power greatly 
to distress us, but, into the life most lack- 
ing in symmetry, in peace and hope, 
would surely come the exceeding peac^^ 
of God, and, steadily more and more, 
the abiding presence of His Spirit ; bring- 
ing to us calm in the midst of the storm, 
peace in the thick of the conflict, and 



8 MEDITATIONS. 

transforming us more and more into the 
gracious likeness of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

It is true that even to-day, here and 
there among us, Hves thus centered in 
God, led by their Father's faithful and 
unshrinking love, are passing on through 
the shadows into the light ; through pain 
into peace, as of old many once most hu- 
man saints "out of weakness were made 
strong;" out of all their imperfections 
were lifted, even while drinking earth's 
most bitter cups, into fellowship with 
their Lord and, living, as "seeing Him 
who is invisible," made heirs of the glory 
to be revealed. 

A little while ago, a life that had long 
been one of peculiar loneliness and self- 
denial, and, in its later days, of great suf- 
fering, came to its earthly ending in a hos- 
pital in a strange city, but among friends 
who, if known but for a time, had min- 
istered as to their Lord Himself, in the 
person of His suffering child. 

It is not our purpose to declare the 
identity of this woman who was led by 
the way of the cross into exceeding trust 
and strength. But it may bring hope to 




MEDITATIONS. 9 

other hearts in kindred need to show by 
some records left among a mass of papers, 
how one brave soul who fully trusted in 
the Lord Jesus, stayed herself upon Him 
in her hours of supreme trial; how she 
strove steadfastly to enter into fellowship 
with Him in His sufferings, and into full 
acceptance of His will concerning her; 
and how she was sustained, and com- 
forted and steadily drawn ever nearer to 
Him, and more and more conformed to 
His likeness, even unto death. 

It is enough to say of her that, born 
apparently to ease and affluence and love, 
family reverses, joined to other sorrows, 
entirely altered her environment, and 
from a brilHant, intellectual, art-loving, 
life-enjoying girl, would have changed 
her into an embittered, lonely and unbe- 
lieving woman, had not her Lord, keep- 
ing His loving guard over her deepening 
needs, led her to what was to her the 
Mother Church, with its holy ministeries 
and its Christly servants, where she was 
guided step by step into the knowledge 
and love of God and, even in these mod- 
ern days of unbelief, into an unusual 
sympathy with the aloneness, and yet also 



lO MEDITATIONS. 

with the overcoming peace of her Saviour, 
and into an absorbing desire to know 
Him and serve Him perfectly, whatever 
that knowing might lead her to or from. 

It needs not that we trace the way by 
which she was led, nor the shadowed 
steeps up which she steadfastly carried her 
cross. We could not if we would; we 
most certainly would not, break the 
silence and reserve in which this brave 
soul walked with Christ so many days. 
Only one or two out of all the world even 
remotely shared that life, and they could 
not enter its darkest hours. 

During her years of bodily vigor and 
of earnest seeking after God and the 
knowledge of His will, she had carefully 
followed the practice of meditation, or- 
dinarily devoting a half hour to it in the 
morning and a longer period towards the 
close of the day. 

The method she used, given in the 
appendix, called for the writing of such 
thoughts as the Holy Spirit suggested 
as an aid to concentration and sustained 
attention. 

As her conflicts became severer, her 
meditations became more and more cen- 



MEDITATIONS. II 

tered on Christ, and her personal hold 
on God semed but to grow the firmer. 
Many blank-books containing her medi- 
tations in her earlier years were found 
after her death, carefully arranged and 
marked "To be burned unread.*' This di- 
rection was reverently followed. 

But the notes made in the Meditations 
of the last two years, were not so marked, 
and some of these make up this volume. 
They prove, as nothing else could, the 
value of this practice by the growth of 
her soul as she reverently and patiently 
followed in spirit in these leadings of her 
Lord. In the use of the Appendix and 
of these her meditations may lie the fru- 
ition of her strong desire, — which she 
thought broken off, — to be a blessing to 
others; even to all who shall strive to 
follow her as she followed Christ. 

Of her, of all modern souls of whom we 
have caught real glimpses, it may, we 
think, most truly be said that God in Jesus 
Christ was her all, and that her expe- 
rience has fully proved the abundant 
power of His grace to strengthen, to sat- 
isfy and to transfigure any soul in any 
human need. 



12 MEDITATIONS. 

Busy till the beginning of the end in a 
large city ; one of its most active and, on 
certain Hnes, most successful art-work- 
ers ; devoted, so far as in her lay, for her 
one personal pleasure to the service of 
her Church, and of the souls and bodies 
of others in need; honored and trusted 
by men and women consecrated to simi- 
lar service, her life seems to have drawn 
its one full solace and inspiration, not 
from any human source, but directly, as 
did that of a'Kempis, from her personal 
contemplation of Christ. 

One woman friend, like herself a 
lonely worker in the great city, but strong 
in spiritual wisdom and gentle peace, did 
indeed to a certain extent minister to her, 
— and yet even that was an impersonal 
ministering, — as one lays cool, strong, 
tender fingers on temples tense with pain, 
and without words, calms the throbbing, 
cools the fever. 

Little as that would have seemed to 
most of us, to this brave soul it was the 
one cup of cold water she craved, and 
verily it has not lost its reward and shall 
not. 

Her silent years sped on ; she had won 



MEDITATIONS. I3 

her place in Art. She was doing a worthy 
work. Her hands were full and strong, 
her eyes clear, her soul true, her faith 
and consecration ever-deepening, her ser- 
vice broadening, when suddenly she 
came face to face with disease ; bitter, un- 
escapable, pitiless. 

Her body had been supple and gra- 
cious, full womanly, her servant, the 
willing minister of her generous will. It 
became a body of death, the seat of 
agony, — the helpless prey of a living and 
devouring death. 

How she met and accepted this most 
fearful ordeal; how she bound her will, 
as well as her suffering body to the Cross 
she received as from Christ's own hands, 
her simple yet subHme words show in her 
meditations. 

As in the earlier years she accepted 
poverty and sorrow, so in these deepen- 
ing depths she accepts whatever God 
sends her in quietness; — she bears her 
most rare aloneness in unrepining silence ; 
she goes to the hospital and endures the 
most critical operations with hardly a 
reference in her meditations to any 
earthly pain, never to any fear, even as 



14 MEDITATIONS. 

in reality she faced them without a 
murmur. 

Not what was to come to her in her 
earthly life, but what she was to find in 
Christ in it all to enable her to know Him 
and the "height and depth and length 
and breadth of that love that passeth 
knowledge" — save as God Himself reveals 
it, — and to fit her for His service on earth 
or in Heaven, was the one dominant 
note in all her communings with God, — 
the one Rock she held to as life's bitter- 
est billows submerged her fainting soul. 

To her human friends, she was still 
simply gentle and patient and greatly sil- 
ent: — as one whose strength comes from 
hidden sources, and who rests on tender 
and trusted, if unseen arms. 

Months passed between the earlier and 
the later operations. There seemed par- 
tial relief, marked by deeper consecra- 
tion to the service of other sufferers, and 
a richer life in God. Then again came 
rapidly developing disease, and after 
months of severe suffering, bravely 
borne. Victory through Christ over all 
earth's ills. 

Two years ago she died. During the 



MEDITATIONS. 15 

preceding two years she had gone often, 
sometimes in heavy anxieties, sometimes 
in much pain, back and forth from the 
city where her work lay. Many of these 
meditations were written on the train on 
these trips ; often on the backs of old let- 
ters ; on anything that would hold them. 

She thus stayed herself on God, and 
was comforted by His promises. 

Wherever she was, in her home, on the 
train or in the hospital, her sorest emer- 
gencies were marked only by these spec- 
ial concentrations of her thoughts on 
Christ and by deepened consecration to 
His will. In all the meditations there 
was found not one expression of any im- 
patience under her distress, not one re- 
bellious groan: — once or twice only, she 
wondered why she was led as she was. 

The way was not always clear, it was 
often very dark and painful, but she 
trusted and loved God in her hardest and 
darkest hours. 

It was to her the "my one way to 
learn more of the spirit of Christ's will- 
ing sacrifice." 

She met and endured her hours 
of supremest trial absolutely alone with 



l6 MEDITATIONS. 

God, and in unwavering submission to the 
Divine Will. It is doubtful if there is any- 
written record of any other modern life so 
silent, so brave, so supremely alone with 
God, and yet more akin to the will Christ 
breathed in Gethsemane. 

God gave to her no transports but 
He gave her power in her dark- 
est hours still to say, '^nevertheless 
not my will but Thine be done;" 
still to desire to enter into fellowship 
with the crucified and to know the beati- 
tudes of the cross. 

To us of these colder, more remote 
Christian centuries, these years when 
so many, even of His disciples, have 
ceased to remember with strong personal 
sympathy, that if Jesus Christ "died like 
a God, He suffered like a rnan,'' it is 
almost startling to read these revelations 
of her increasing sympathy with His suf- 
ferings of every nature, as well as her 
childlike and immovable trust in His divine 
love, even while step by step she was en- 
tering into deeper depths of pain. 

And thus her thoughts flow on — up- 
ward — Godward, 

Less and less of herself she breathes in 



MEDITATIONS. If 

any selfish thought and more and more 
of Christ; of desire for the compre- 
hension of His Will; of power for 
the acceptance of His thought for the 
world ; of grace for the losing of herself 
and all her limitations in His love, 
peace and purity, and for fitness for God's 
service somewhere, if denied it on earth, 
she writes. 

On these she fixed her lonely, suffering 
eyes, — for these she asked in a faith pain 
could not dim, nor death appall. 

And God gave her — what? Grace to 
hold on to the invisible until the very end, 
as one who sees, and knows, and rests 
on the ''Strong Son of God, immortal 
love," and goes on with a steadfast soul 
into the life where there is neither 
loneliness, nor pain, nor any further 
lack, but life, eternal, perfect, — filled 
with God, and ''satisfied in His Hkeness." 

He gave her, as some believe, one thing 
more ; the power and right to help others 
still treading painful paths, by these brief 
and simple, yet often heart-wrung medi- 
tations on her dear Lord Jesus. 

And therefore for the sake of those 
still bearing heavy and ever increasing 



1 8 MEDITATIONS. 

burdens, and who must continue to bear 
them whatsoever they are, whether of the 
body or of the soul, till the Lord Himself 
removes them from their fainting souls, 
these meditations are sent forth. 

Read in the light of her personal his- 
tory, they are words of strong and 
tender cheer from one who bore a 
heavy cross unflinchingly to the very end, 
and, having been sustained and comfort- 
ed by God's grace was enabled to over- 
come both life and death, and to enter in 
to unfathomable depths of peace. She 
would, as we truly believe, even amidst 
the joys of heaven, find a new gladness if 
permitted to comfort and inspire others 
who are still in the midst of earth's con- 
flicts, but who shall yet share her victory 
if they patiently and faithfully follow the 
Guide who led her to her rest. 

Jean Christie Root. 



MEDITATIONS. I9 



'Tollow Me." 

THIS was at the very beginning of 
their conversion. That was the 
first step to go to Him, that fol- 
lowing of Jesus, — They did not know 
what they were doing at all. If they 
could have seen the future very likely 
they would not have had the courage to 
listen to Jesus, and if they had had the 
courage they could not have understood 
it all, because before people's conversion 
they have not the capacity for knowing 
or understanding, — but they had taken 
the first step. They had begun to follow 
Jesus. 

He asks us all that question ; not only 
when we first go to Him but always, — 
and the only thing for us to seek is His 
glory and the learning to know Him. 

We must want Jesus for Himself, and 
not for anything that He can give us. 



20 



MEDITATIONS. 



God's Gifts, 

TO some people God gives a great 
deal and Himself beside : — to 
others nothing but Himself. But 
Heaven is only God. If God does not 
satisfy us, we shall not be satisfied even 
in Heaven. The measure of happiness 
in Heaven will be found in the measure 
of our love to God. 

The true principle of obedience is not 
to choose one's service, but to do one's 
best in the service God chooses for us. 
There can be no real obedience in simply 
following out our own will and doing 
what we like to do. 

It seems to me that we should be will- 
ing to let God's will take its course with 
us even through the actions of others and 
in the trying circumstances of our lives. 
I suppose that only the actual practice 
of holiness can give us clear sight of God 
or of ourselves. 

We do not care half enough for our 
own selves : we care for our lower selves, 
but not for the higher, — else we should 
long to be more like God. 



MEDITATIONS. 21 

''Be Ye Perfect:' 

I THINK what I see specially just now 
is the necessity of seeking perfection. 
Let me consider the possibility of 
attaining it; the reason for doing so. 
The possibility, — Be ye perfect even as 
your Father which is in Heaven is per- 
fect. Then there is a possibility of my 
attaining to that supernatural beauty 
which can only come through grace. 

How is it that we have any part at all 
in the result of the work of grace, if it 
is all grace ; if I of myself can do nothing 
and God does everything. I think it is 
because we must will to correspond with 
God's grace. God gives the grace, but 
man must use the grace, for God re- 
spects man's will and even He cannot 
force man to accept His grace. 

The suffering is the same, the means 
the same, the opportunity the same, but 
how different the result when one's will 
works with God's. It seems to me that 
the lesson of this meditation to me is to 
begin now to give my whole will to God ; 
to take up what remains to me of life, it 
may be a good deal, it may be almost 



^2 MEDITATIONS. 

nothing, and make it as perfect as I can. 
If God asks service of me, I belong to 
Him; and if He asks suffering and 
death, I belong to Him. 



^'That We Should Live According to 
God in the Spirit," 

LET me try to think what it is to live 
according to God, not by outward 
rule, but in the spirit, — not with a 
religion of the world, but of one's own 
heart. In order to do that, one must give 
oneself to God. One can live a life that 
seems to be religious and go to Church 
a great deal, and do a great deal of char- 
itable and philanthropic work, without 
giving oneself to God at all, with- 
out even knowing what it is to 
live according to His Spirit; — ^that 
is, to let oneself be guided by the Holy 
Ghost; — and one can live a life that 
seems utterly useless, without ability to 
do any work at all, which is one steady 
act of obedience to His will. 

That is the old lesson that is so 
hard to learn, — that obedience is bet- 



MEDITATIONS. 23 

ter than sacrifice, — that it is to do 
just the one thing that God gives 
us to do, that is His will for us, not 
anything, however much more important 
it may seem to us, that is not His will. 

To do God's will, to suffer, to receive 
all in obedience to Him. That is what 
He asks of many people. 

That God takes all the responsibility of 
my life upon Himself. 

To make an act of self surrender to- 
day. 

Our Rights. 

"That they may have right to the Tree 
of Life.' 

LET me try to meditate on the rights 
of God's people; what they are; 
how they are to be obtained; 
whether they are worth having. 

What are the things to which we have 
a right because we belong to Him ? The 
rights of those who do His command- 
ments; the right to the Tree of Life, — 
everlasting life. 

Surely to do His commandments, if there 
is any God at all ; to serve Him and to love 



24 MEDITATIONS, 

Him, would seem to give us a right to 
live, but, besides that, it seems as if we 
should have the right of children with a 
Father; not the rights of people who 
work for wages to be paid, but the right 
to know His love, sinful as we are ; if we 
try to serve Him, if we are obedient to 
Him, if we surrender our wills to Him 
He is pledged to take care of us, to love 
us because He made us, because we are 
His. He loves us when we belong to 
Him. Of course He loves us always 
even when we are most disobedient, but 
He certainly must love us more when we 
try to please Him. A 

How then are we to obtain our rights 
to the Tree of Life ? By doing His will, 
not doing something that we like to do 
for Him, or that we would choose to do 
for Him, but by doing what he chooses 
for us. 



I 



MEDITATIONS. 2$ 

''Lovest Thou Me V 

THREE times Christ asked Peter the 
same question, and thrice He gave 
Him the same command. 

Let me consider who the people are 
that our Lord commands to serv'e Him, 
md what is the result of loving and serv- 
ing Him ? 

Who are theyj Those who are to do 
His work or perhaps to suffer for Him. 

He demands a great deal of those who 
love Him. Of those who do not love 
or care for Him, He asks personally ap- 
parently nothing. Why should He ? 

The result of loving Him is not mere 
ease or personal comfort, that is certain. 
It is to enter into His service, which is 
likely to be a very hard service, for it is 
no part of His love to make things easy 
for His people here. Yet if it is hard, it 
has deep compensations. Surely it is 
better to love Him and to be poor and 
ill and unfortunate than never to have 
known Him, and to be comfortable and 
well and happy. Certainly it is ; / know 
this to be true. 

Surrender to God's will is shown by 



26 MEDITATIONS. 

the circumstances we accept as from Him 
and is to be carried out by people still 
in the world. We must, if that be His 
will, desire to glorify God by any way, 
even by the way of crucifixion. 

He sees before each of us at our con- 
version the way we shall have to follow 
till the very end. 

He asked Saint Peter three times if 
he loved Him. He gave him his work 
to do because He loved him, and then He 
told him of the great act of suffering at 
the end. He never told St. Peter that 
He loved him. He never told him what 
He would do for Him. 

What does God do for His people then, 
for those who really love Him ? Does 
He not do anything but demand service 
of them and let them die a cruel death? 

Yes, He gives His servants an oppor- 
tunity of becoming like Himself. 

''Follow Thou Mer 

WHAT He said to St. Peter, He 
says to all of us. Let me think 
what it means to follow Him. 
In St. Peter's case, it meant to work for 



MEDITATIONS. 2/ 

Him all his life and to die the same death 
that He was to die. To work for Him, 
that is what we all must do, if we belong 
to Him. 

He says this to all of us at the begin- 
ning of our conversion, and He never 
gets beyond that, even to the end. The 
greatest saint can never do more than try 
to follow Him. He said to St. Peter; — 
Follow Me. He says to me the same 
thing. 

He has certainly called me to follow 
Him, and I must do it, and because there 
is an end to these earthly things, if 
He asks us to follow Him here, it is that 
we may follow Him in Heaven. 



'What is That to Thee ? Follow 
Thou Me/' 

WHAT business was it of Peter's 
what another disciple was to do ? 
St. John did not need to be cor- 
rected by Him. Peter had been told to feed 
the sheep and the lambs who could not 
help themselves, not to direct the work of 



28 MEDITATIONS. 

another shepherd. There are two 
thoughts specially to be thought of here, 
— one that our Lord wishes us to mind 
our own calling; another that He makes 
Himself the example to be followed and 
no one else. He did not tell St. John to 
follow St. Peter, nor St. Peter to imitate 
St. John. They were both quite differ- 
ent and they were told simply to follow 
Jesus, not to be brought into uniformity 
with each other. 

That is the one thing which He sets 
before each of us, to follow Him, each 
in our own way, because each of us sees 
Him in a different light, and He leads 
each of us by a different road, yet we 
each can follow Him. 

That explains how He can care for 
each one of us, because, as I have never 
seen before so clearly, we are all differ- 
ent, and each of us can see Him in a dif- 
ferent light, and love Him with a differ- 
ent love from any other, so that to lose 
any one of us would be a loss of some- 
thing to Him that no one else could give. 



MEDITATIONS. 2g 

"Thou Knowest That I Love Thee/' 

WHAT does Peter's answer indi- 
cate? That he had changed. 
How had he been changed ? By 
the action of penitence. 

He had lost himself, at last, completely. 
He now made no protestations although 
his nature was still the same, as was 
shown later in his question about St. 
John ? He was changed towards him- 
self more than towards others. I sup- 
pose that, generally, that is the way with 
people, — one may have a great sense of 
one's own sins and real penitence and still 
not the right attitude of mind towards 
others. 

His answer showed his sincerity. He 
knew that our Lord saw into His mind, 
and he had to believe now that He knew 
him much better than he knew himself, 
and he was sincere. No one who is not 
sincere can truly call God to witness to 
his sincerity. Peter's self-conceit was 
broken down though it was not de- 
stroyed. He had to go through a great 
deal more discipline before that was 
really changed. 



30 MEDITATIONS. 

''She Saith Unto Him, Rahbonni" 

WHAT did she call Jesus when He 
called her by name ? He called 
her by her name, but she did not 
call Him by His. He is one and we are 
almost infinite in number. He is Master 
and Lord to each one of us, but we are 
called by different names to Him. He 
is the same, but we are all different, yet 
because we are all different. He is differ- 
ent to each one. We all reflect Him at 
different angles. That is why He cannot 
spare one soul out of all the millions be- 
cause each soul is able to love Him with 
a different love ; to see some one of His 
infinite aspects which no other soul can 
see, and as we see Him differently, so He 
loves each with a different love. The 
love that He has for me is not the same 
love that He has for any one else that 
ever lived or that ever can live. I 
used to wonder how it was that 
God could care for so many indi- 
viduals, but I believe now that He can- 
not spare one out of the many because 
they are all different ; that He needs every 



MEDITATIONS. 3 1 

one of us because we can all love Him 
with a different love. 

''He Upbraided Them With Their Un- 
belief/' 

OUR Lord upbraids them with their 
lack of faith. They had no doubt 
been talking Him over, arguing 
with each other about Him. It must 
have been one constant argument and 
discussion with them at that time. That 
was what they did. What they ought to 
have done was to have waited quietly; 
to have prayed and believed and hoped. 
They did not believe and they did not 
hope ; they argued and He did not like it 
at all. He never does like it. He made 
that perfectly plain, — it is impossible to 
please Him by doubting Him. To please 
Him, one must give oneself generously, 
fearlessly to Him; that is one sure way 
of pleasing Him. They had that chance 
then, and they never had it afterwards, 
and it is the same way with us, with me. 

I have the chance to trust Him now; 
in the future state I shall never have it. 

It may be one of the regrets of that 



32 MEDITATIONS. 



I 



future state to think of the lost opportun- 
ities of serving God when one could, 
not understand His will. I 

He likes to have us trust Him gener- 
ously, — absolutely. It pleases Him. 



''Casting All Your Care Upon Him, for 
He Careth for You," 

ALL your care. I think we are too 
apt to cast some of our care upon 
God, and then keep back what is 
perhaps just the most worrying, distract- 
ing part of it for ourselves, — of course it 
is better to be relieved of a part than of 
none; it is better to trust God for one's 
spiritual needs, and to worry over one's 
natural needs oneself than not to trust 
Him at all ; to trust God for large things, 
but not with small; to trust Him with 
what people call afflictions, and not with 
money difficulties ; to trust God for one's 
self, and not for others. 

But I want to try and lay all my 
care upon God: — to try to-day when 
things go wrong to put it all off on Him. 



MEDITATIONS. 33 

Surrender, Trust and Peace. 

WHAT are the things necessary for 
peace ? 
What is peace ; peace with God ? 

There can be no peace for a soul 
that is not surrendered to God. Our 
Lord was always at pe ace. He could 
never have known what it was to be 
otherwise. 

Anxiety, grief, suffering can not spoil 
the peace Christ gives, — nothing can take 
it away. It comes by surrender to God's 
will, by trust in Him. 

I suppose it is possible to surrender 
oneself without feeling any comfort from 
doing so, — if one does not zvholly trust 
Him. 

One must have love as well as obe- 
dience. It is obedience to do the very thing 
that God asks, not something else, no 
matter how much more useful, desirable, 
or necessary that may seem to be. 

One has no right to ask God for rea- 
sons. 

What God demands of us is ab- 
solute surrender to His will. After that, 
He does give us perfect peace. 



34 MEDITATIONS. 

That I will live the rest of my life ac- 
cording to God's will. 

''Gathering Up the Fragments That Re- 
main/' 

LET me meditate upon the waste of 
one's life before conversion; upon 
what is left ; upon the use to which 
that should be put ; upon the past, 
which nothing can undo; whose only 
remedy is penitence, because by penti- 
nence only can one reach and hold the 
forgiveness that goes with His cross, 
that comes from His passion. 

But then, having surrendered, having 
known the forgiveness that follows on 
penitence, something still remains. And 
what remains of one's life must be given to 
God, and not only that, but lived accord- 
ing to His will, however difficult it may 
be to see the use of it, — however useless 
or wasted, one's life may seem to be, it 
is only by giving it all to God, both past 
and present, that our past can ever be 
restored and changed according to God's 
plans for us, and so perfected by the 
present and the future. 



I 



MEDITATIONS. 35 

^^Lay up for yourselves treasures in 
Heaven/' 

THERE the treasure should be laid 
up in Heaven. What is laid 
up in God's care rust does 
not corrupt. There is no decay in 
Heaven, no corruption of any sort. He 
speaks of Heaven as of a certain, a defi- 
nite place, — as having certain laws and 
characteristics, where certain things can- 
not exist, where no thieves are, no decay, 
no loss. 

There no one will have to keep guard 
over anything. On earth it is all so dif- 
ferent: — here nothing is safe or certain. 
How much better, then, to have our treas- 
ure where God is keeping it safe for us. 

I learn this, that Heaven is a real place, 
with certain characteristics and con- 
ditions; that our Lord commands us to 
lay up our treasures there, and not here. 

''Holiness Without Which no Man Shall 
See the Lord," 

NO one can see God without holiness. 
That vision follows as the result 
of discipline, after one has come 
to God. I want to consider it as being 



36 MEDITATIONS. 

the result of what has gone before, — not 
as standing alone; that the end of all 
Christian living, all discipline and trial is 
that we may see God. There is nothing 
beyond this, nothing greater to be hoped 
for, and this can never be without 
holiness, so no suffering can be too great 
that helps us to this, or is the means to 
us of attaining to know and see Him. 

Since I can see God only when I attain 
to holiness, and since to see God is the 
sole object of my existence, — to see Him, 
to love Him, and to serve Him,^I should 
welcome anything that can discipline me 
and lead me to holiness, no matter what 
it is. 

''The Wages of Sin is Death/' 

WHAT is the result of sin ? Always 
evil, misery, suffering, both 
physical and mental, — no mat- 
ter what the sin may be, whether sin 
against God or sin against man. Sin 
against oneself, sin against God, brings 
separation from Him, and separation 
from God is death to the soul. Nothing 
but sin can separate us from God; that 



MEDITATIONS. 37 

is the result, worse than ruining one's 
body, for one's body may suffer through 
no fault of one's own. 

Separation from God, who is the life 
of the soul means spiritual decay and 
death. 

Not because God arbitrarily punishes 
for sin, but because the sin cuts the soul 
off from Him. 

What it is to Disappoint God, 

LET me try to think what it means 
that God should be disappointed by 
the imperfection of our work. 
What it will mean to us to disappoint 
Him. 

That He should be disappointed in us 
means that we do not respond to His 
grace and have not chosen to use the op- 
portunities He has given us. 

God would never be disappointed in 
us when we were doing our best to please 
Him, no matter how poor and imperfect 
that was. 

What will it mean to us ? 

Surely it will be a very bitter thing to 
see one's wasted opportunities, to know 



38 MEDITATIONS. 

how one might have borne things that 
He laid upon us, and done well a really 
good and perfect and solid piece of work, 
when instead we have spoiled it, and it 
can never be done over again. 

I do believe that God notices how we 
do our work for Him, — that He is 
pleased when we do our best, and that 
He will make good the imperfections of 
our work when we do try to please Him. 

''Newness of Life." 

" ^TT HAT like as Christ was raised 
1 up from the dead by the glory 

of the Father, even so we 
also should walk in nev/ness of life." 
After death, the resurrection. He died 
on the cross and was buried, and then 
He rose to a new life. 

Of course sin never had any control 
over Him, but when He took our nature, 
He took it with all its possibilities of suf- 
fering, of death, and even of temptation, 
but after the resurrection that was all 
changed. 

And we, too, should walk in newness 
of life. I can understand perfectly well 



MEDITATIONS. 39 

what that means. It does not mean that 
we are to be exempted from temptation, 
but that we are to be made able to resist 
it in His strength, and this comes from 
the yielding of the will. 

We yield our wills to Him, as He gave 
Himself to death, voluntarily, and then 
His life comes in to take the place of that 
which we have given away. 

I see this, — we die to ourselves that 
we may live to Him. We can never live 
to Him, unless we die first, — first death, 
then resurrection. 

I have not half died to myself. That 
is why His life in me seems so weak 
at times, because it has become only a 
part of myself and not the whole, I have 
some of His life and the reason I have 
no more is because I have not driven out 
my own life to make room for it. 

That is the mystery of Communion. 
One's self or Christ. I can have myself or 
I can have Christ, whichever I prefer, 
but I cannot possibly have both. 

Thus death is the necessary prepara- 
tion for life. I must die to myself before 
I can live to Him. 



46 MfiDITAflONS. 

'Tear Not Them Which Kill the Body/' 

FEAR not those who can only hurt you 
in this world, those who can kill 
only the body. 
Our Lord in saying this shows how lit- 
tle consequence He gave to His life, and 
yet to us this life seems so much. He 
saw that other life, that other world. We 
see this one. 

Our Lord always tried to keep people 
from worrying, — to give them peace of 
mind. 



''Thy Will Be Done:' 

THE yielding of the will now an( 
here as if it were in Heaven. W( 
cannot afford, then, to do any- 
thing but God's will. Why ? Because 
we belong to Him now, and we hope to 
be with Him always. God is perfect pur- 
ity. How then can I hope to please 
Him ? By yielding my will to Him that 
He may purify me even as He is pure. 
We give ourselves to God because He 
has bought us with His life. We try to 
bring every thought into captivity to 



MEDITATIONS. 4 1 

Christ, to yield all, not a part; thoughts 
as well as actions. 

Try not to think anything to-day that 
He would not like me to think. 

''Ye Have Not Yet Resisted Unto 
Blood/' 

OUR Lord would have died rather 
than have yielded to the slightest 
sin, if such a thing as sin had 
been possible to Him. Yet He offered 
no resistance to pain and suffering. He 
yielded Himself up to pain, but He never 
yielded a hair's breadth to sin : — yet how 
little resistance I make to sin. 

Sin to Him would have been worse 
than any pain. It would have been the 
one thing he could not have borne, yet 
I bear it so easily. It seems such a little 
thing to me to commit sin. Why then 
is it so easy for me to offend God ? Why 
do I try so Httle to please Him? I go 
on acting and talking without any refer- 
ence to God at all, — forgetting Him half 
the time, — such a lack of recollection, 
such a lax, careless spiritual life, — lack of 
love, lack of faith, — especially lack of 
love. 



42 MEDITATIONS. 

''The Contradiction of Sinners/' 

WHY did He endure the contradic- 
tion of sinners ? Because He 
loved them. He loved me, even 
when I was farthest away from Him. 

We should then remember how He en- 
dured contradictions, when they come to 
us also. How did He endure them ? He 
did not endure them as one who did not 
care. He did care, but He forgave 
them, and I think He made excuses. He 
wanted to see the best side of us, not 
the worst. 

It is such a commonplace to say that 
we should do as He would do, and yet 
how hard it is to do it. 

''The Lord God Giveth Them Light/' 

GOD gives His people light. Some- 
time they will need no natural 
light for they will get their light 
from Him, — not only spiritual but actual 
light also. God is the only source of 
light in Heaven. Then all false light 
will be done away, just as the full blaze 
of the sun does away with all artificial 



MEDITATIONS. 43 

light. All light comes from God. There 
is no other source of light at all. 

Spiritual light, intellectual, natural 
light all come from Him alone, and all 
die out ; only God remains, and God will 
give us light everywhere. 

He will give me light, — often obscured 
and hidden by my sins, but light still. 
How ? By His word. His sacraments. 
His counsel, — speaking to me Himself, 
as He speaks to no one else, with words 
meant only for me. 

''They Shall See His Face, and His 
Name Shall Be in Their Foreheads,'' 

THEY shall be marked with His 
name, as belonging to Him, as be- 
ing in His real likeness. The 
same thought again, that Heaven is only 
the perfection, the full realization of 
what is begun on earth. There, visible 
to all, plain, clear, distinct. His name 
marking them for His own,— here, 
indistinct, marred by sin, and obscured 
by our own blindness, yet although 
hardly to be seen, still there, just like 
pictures signed with His name. The fin- 



44 MEDITATIONS. 

ished picture, the result of His work ; His 
patient work, that we have tried so hard 
to spoil; that we have sometimes tried 
to do ourselves in our own way ; that we 
have hindered, by our self-will and pride 
and impatience, until it has seemed to us 
as if He could never do the work at all; 
the work that needs surrender from us 
more than anything we can do : for which, 
surrender is the only means. 

We can help God by our full surrender 
to His will, by our entire consecration. 



''His Servants Shall Serve Him/' 

WHAT is the condition of friend- 
ship with Jesus ? Obedience. 
Why is obedience the essential 
principle of Christian life ? I think be- 
cause it includes everything. It means 
humility. We strive to do His will first 
because it is His will, not our own. It 
is voluntary obedience ; not the obedience 
of the slave; to choose His service, be- 
cause it is His. 

Enforced obedience is not obedience at 
all. 



MEDltAtlONS. 4S 

Obedience is the price- we have to pay 
for God. 

We cannot have God and keep our- 
selves. 

We give up ourselves to Him and He 
gives Himself to us. 

It is such a mistake to suppose that 
God will give anything for nothing. 

God gives what is infinitely great, for 
what is very little, but the little must be 
given all the same. 

God has His price and that price is 
ourselves, — just ourselves. 

'^They Shall Reign Forever and Ever," 

ST. JOHN has just said that they shall 
serve, being His servants and hav- 
ing their foreheads marked with 
His name. Now He says that they shall 
reign, for those who serve God reign 
under Him, in His name, and in His 
power. 

And He does give power to those that 
are His, even here, — if not over others, 
at least the power to overcome sin. And 
there they shall always reign over sin, 
there sin shall be put under their feet. 



46 Meditations. 

They shall reign because they serve; 
because only in obedience and surrender 
can people receive from God the power to 
obey Him, and in obeying Him, to rule 
over themselves and over sin, and then 
to help others also to overcome and to 
serve, even as they have overcome and 
learned to serve. 

''I Have Chosen You That Ye Should Go 
and Bring Forth Fruit/' 

FOR what does He choose us ? For 
what we can do. For the fruit that 
we can bring forth. Let me try to 
think what the fruit is. What did the 
Apostles do ? They worked miracles, 
they were holy themselves ; they had the 
fruit of faith and love and hope and pa- 
tience. They gave up their lives in mar- 
tyrdom. They helped to convert the 
world. God does not do things without 
our help. He lets us be the instruments 
with which He works. He uses us, yet 
the number of those that He uses is com- 
paratively small. He expects us to 
respond to His grace. He gives us each 
a vocation. He calls us, but it is for us 
to answer to the vocation. 



MEDITATIONS. 47 

There can be no love without obe- 
dience. Love without obedience is mere 
sentiment, worthless; like the love that 
people profess for their friends when they 
are not willing to sacrifice anything for 
them. And He constantly insists upon 
it. ''He who doeth My will, who keeps 
My commandments, he it is that loveth 
Me." No one who does not try to obey 
Him, loves Him, for love cannot be with- 
out obedience. 

If I love Him, I must wish to obey 
Him. If I do not wish to obey Him, I 
do not love Him. 

To ask Him often to-day to show me 
His will, and to try to do it when He 
does. 

*'He That Abideth in Me the Same 
Bringing Forth Much Fruit/' 

WE shall bring forth much fruit if 
we abide in Him and He in us. 
Our Lord insisted on the 
necessity of our bearing fruit. The only 
way to do this is to abide in Him; not 
near Him, not even following after Him, 
but in Him, — to be a part of Him. 



48 MEDITATIONS. 

He wants to have us with Him all the 
time. He wants us to bear fruit. He is 
the root, the vine, and the life. We are 
the fruits that people see, — they see Him 
through us. 

I ought to be so much a part of Him, 
that I should unconsciously help other 
people by sharing His life in me, with 
them. 

"Not as the World Giveth, Give I Unto 
You/' 

OUR Lord admits that the world 
does give. He must know that a 
great many people prefer the 
world's gifts to His. The world's gifts 
are things that anyone might like. 
Christ's gifts are of no value to anyone 
who does not love Him. No one who 
does not love Him can have them, be- 
cause He gives them only to His own, 
who can value them and use them. 

He gives what no one else can give to 
His own. He gives Himself. 

Surely He is worth more than any- 
thing that the world can give. 

But, as in so many meditations lately, 



MEDITATIONS. 49 

I see in this, that the measure of our love 
for Him is the measure of our spiritual 
life. Peace, joy, hope, patience all de- 
pend upon hov\^ much we love Him. 

That to love Him is the way by 
which we learn to love everything else. 

Death the Way to Life, 

IF we be dead with Christ, we believe 
that we shall also live with Him. If 
we are dead, — if we bear the suffer- 
ing that He bore, then we shall have the 
glory also. How many people expect to 
live with Him, who never think of dying 
with Him; but according to St. Paul, 
death is the necessary prelude to life. 

We must die to sin before we can live 
to God. 

We must die to sin before we can rise 
to eternal life. 

If we are dead with Him, we must 
live with Him. 

To ask Him often to-day to give me 
His life. 



50 MEDITATIONS. 

"/ am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning 
and the End/' 



HE is the beginning. Things only 
have value as they are in Him, as 
they are done for Him. To live 
for Him, with Him, and in Him, is my 
appointed end. 

Yes: — He is the end, not my plans, 
nor my work, nor what I might be or do, 
— His glory is to be the end of my being. 

That is the end for which I was 
created, and if He prefers that I should 
serve Him, not by work, but by suffering, 
and by disappointment, and by surrender, 
why should I rebel against it ? To rebel 
against it is to fight against His will. 

What then should I do ? Only this 
to try always and everywhere to surren- 
der myself to God. To try to believe 
that He knows all better than I do, and 
not only that He knows better what is 
best for others, and for the general 
course of events, but that He does really 
care to make the best of me : that He is 
doing the best for me that can be done, 
and giving me the opportunities that I 
most need ; that God will do what is best 



MEDITATIONS. 5^ 

for me, even in spite of my present lack 
of faith in Him, but that He cannot do 
fully what He wishes if I hinder Him. 

Perhaps it may be true that God is 
greatly glad when He is able fully to help 
us ; when He sees that all our trials are 
over, and that he can truly comfort and 
bless us forevermore. 

'Why Are Ye So Fearful r 

LET me try to meditate on the circum- 
stances in which these words were 
said. The danger to the disciples 
was not imaginary, yet Christ seemed to 
take no notice. He was asleep. But His 
presence ought to have been enough for 
them. They lacked patience as well as 
faith. Still the danger seemed terribly 
real. 

God expects us to trust Him in any 
danger, no matter what it may be, not 
only in danger, but in the realization of 
it. Not only when a thing is threatened, 
but when it comes. 

No doubt people often think they trust 
God when trials seem far off and uncer- 
tain, but when they come, they fail. The 
Apostles, I dare say, would have said 



52 MEDITATIONS. 

they would not be frightened in just such 
circumstances as those. But when God 
seemed to take no notice they were 
afraid. 

That was so natural, yet our Lord re- 
buked them for it. He expected more 
of them than that. 

It is always hard to feel that God does 
not care what becomes of us, and yet it 
is something which our Lord rebuked 
always most severely. 

God cannot bear that we should accuse 
Him of forgetting us. 

It would almost seem, if I can say it 
with reverence, that it hurts Him; that 
He is sensitive about our thinking hardly 
of Him. 

I cannot but think that lack of faith in 
His love and care for us, is most dis- 
pleasing to Him. His presence should 
fully satisfy us: — it is enough. 

We must wait God's time in all things. 

It is so natural to try to hasten God : — 
to want things to turn out as we wish and 
soon; and we do not want to wait. Yet 
nothing can be more displeasing to God 
in His children than lack of faith in His 
love, and our haste to prove it. 



MEDITATIONS. 53 

''And I Will Give You Rest" 

LET me think to whom our Lord 
promises to give rest if they come 
to Him. 

What burdens does He take off their 
shoulders ? The burden of sin: the 
burden of fear. 

What God can do for us depends upon 
the measure of our faith in Him. 

Faith in God must be of an infinitely 
higher kind than faith in any person in 
this world, — because we have never seen 
Him nor heard Him speak. 

Faith in a human being is natural, — 
Faith in God is supernatural, and how 
then can it be won ; how can we rise out 
of the limitations of our own nature ? 

Only through supernatural grace 
which introduces into our nature the life 
of Almighty God. 

God asks of His children something 
impossible, yet, when He asks it. He 
gives the means of doing it, thus making 
that possible which was impossible be- 
fore. Therefore He makes it possible to 
have faith, — and faith makes it possible 



54 MEDITATIONS. 

to US to be free from fear and anxiety, — 
possible to rest, even here. 

'^Love One Another, as I Have Loved 
You:' 

I THINK I can be sure of one thing in 
this meditation ; that our Lord wants 
us to know that He loves us as well 
as it is possible to love; that no human 
love can be greater, even when shown in 
a purely human way; that no one could 
love more than He does, and that the end 
of sacrifice, of giving up something for 
God, is deepening love. That as He gave 
His life for us, we should give ours to 
Him, and to others. 

''Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled/' 

OUR Lord calls upon us to exercise 
our wills. Why does He tell us to 
do so in this case ? To be troubled 
is the very opposite of peace, and He 
came to give peace to His people. 

Worry means lack of faith, lack of love. 
It means that one does not really believe 
that God is taking care of us, or that He 
loves us. 



MEDITATIONS. 55 

Why does He warn us against worry? 
For one thing because He loves us, and 
not only because worry is such a bad 
thing in itself, but because He cannot 
bear to see us unhappy. 

That He wants to bear all our cares 
for us. 

To ask Him often to-day to help me. 

''Ye Believe in God, Believe Also in Me." 

OUR Lord has just been telling them 
not to be troubled. Now He is 
giving them the reason why they 
should not be so. Because, He said, you 
believe in God, believe also in Me. 

To believe in God, I think, perhaps, 
means that to believe in God in a general 
way without any personal knowledge of 
Him, cannot keep one from being trou- 
bled. One must believe that He cares 
for us. Love is more to us than power or 
wisdom. 

Peace can never come to any soul ex- 
cept through true faith in God. Indif- 
ference, careless pleasure or happiness 
may come perhaps, but never peace. 

Peace can come to the soul only 
through faith and love : faith to believe 



56 MEDITATIONS. 

that God cares for one, love that is will- 
ing to give itself up to God. 

How then are we to get that peace ? 

Only by giving ourselves wholly up 
to God. Not by trying to give our wor- 
ries up to Him ,and keeping back our- 
selves, but by giving ourselves and all we 
have so that He may take all there is of 
us. 

Only faith in Jesus can give us peace. 

To try to pray often to-day. 

'^A Certain Poor Widow Threw in Two 
Mites/' 

LET me try to meditate on Our Lord's 
watching the people putting money 
into the treasury: try to think of 
Him watching what we do. He sees us 
in what we give. He knows exactly why 
we give it and how much it costs us. 

What did He say when the poor widow 
put in her two mites ? He said that she 
put in more than anyone else. 

Let me try to think how that could be. 

How could two mites be more than the 

large sums of money that others put in? 

I think in at least two ways. It was 

more to her and more to God, — more to 



MEDITATIONS. 57 

her J because two mites were of more im- 
portance to her than their money was to 
them, and more to God, because of her 
spirit of sacrifice, for when she made her 
offering she was not only giving the 
thing itself, but she was sacrificing some- 
thing else, all she had herself. 

To give something up for God ; that is 
one of the blessings of poverty, the op- 
portunity of depriving one-self of some- 
thing that it is perfectly reasonable one 
should have, for God. 

To offer myself to God in the train this 
afternoon. 

*^Behold We Go Up to Jerusalem^ 

HE went before them, up to Jerusa- 
lem, to be crucified. 

Every step that He took brought 
Him nearer to the end, as does every step 
we take bring us nearer to death. He 
went voluntarily. He might, if we could 
imagine such a thing, have turned back ; 
have saved Himself from suffering and 
from death. But He offered Himself by 
His own will. 

Many have been crucified before Him 
and since, whose deaths were common 



58 MEDITATIONS. 

deaths, who died because they had to, un- 
willingly. He offered Himself. It was 
His will to suffer, not His suffering, that 
saved us, not the degree of suffering, 
but the spirit in which it was borne. 

No matter how circumstances may 
hem us in, how suffering may be given to 
us without any choice on our part, it is 
always the same ; our wills are ours, and 
it is the spirit in which we receive it, the 
will to bear suffering that makes the suf- 
fering worth having and worth giving. 

"Without Me Ye Can Do Nothing^ 

HE was warning His disciples 
at the last against self-confidence. 
I do not think that He ever told 
His disciples that they ought not to be 
self-reliant. He might have said to them : 
— "I have shown you the way, now it is 
your place to copy me for yourselves," 
but, instead, He said to them that they 
could do nothing without Him. He 
speaks not only of dependence upon Him, 
we can depend on others besides Him, 
but He means that we must become really 
a part of Him. That is something that 



MEDITATIONS. 59 

only belongs to one's relations with God. 
One cannot be a part of any other human 
being. 

We have no life except in Him. 

^^Lay Up for Yourselves Treasures in 
Heaven" 

OUR Lord says that people should 
lay up for themselves treasure in 
Heaven, which shows conclusively 
that there must be such a place or nothing 
could be laid up there. We have His 
word for it. 

Christ either believed in it Himself, or 
He did not. If He believed in it, it must 
exist or He was mistaken. 

If He did not believe in it, He was not 
what we believe Him to be ; therefore to 
doubt the existence of Heaven is to doubt 
His word. 

Heaven must exist, or nothing could 
be laid up there. Our Lord speaks of 
Heaven as a place, where certain things 
definitely do not happen. He never said 
where Heaven is, but He said as plainly 
as He could that Heaven really exists; 
therefore to doubt Heaven is to doubt 
Him. J 



60 MEDITATIONS. 

That one of His children who prays to 
Him, and offers herself constantly to Him 
should show distrust by doubting His 
word must be a grief to Him. Was He 
mistaken ? 

He could not be mistaken for He was 
God. 

How much comfort I have cut myself 
off from, through lack of faith. 

How untrue I have been to Him, and 
how it must grieve Him that anyone 
should treat Him so. 

To doubt Heaven is to doubt His word 
and His divinity. 

Was ill with rheumatism and general 
distress, — suffered a good deal, but God 
was very good to me. 



'What Wilt Thou That I Should Do 
Unto Thee r 

LET me try to think of our Lord's 
knowledge of what we want, and of 
His power to give it to us and of 
what we should ask. 

Our Lord knew perfectly well what the 
blind man wanted, — yet He asked him. 



MEDITATIONS. 6l 

He knows what we want, — yet He ex- 
pects us to pray to Him for it. 

Therefore, the necessity of prayer, — 
not to change God's will towards us, but 
to help us to correspond to it. 

He was perfectly able to give the blind 
man what he asked for. 

If God does not answer our prayer, it 
is not because He cannot do so. 

God certainly does withold temporal 
blessings. 

What should we ask for ? We should 
wish first of all that God should be glori- 
fied in us. 

God is able to give us anything He 
chooses. He chooses what we need. 

''Then Took Mary a Pound of Ointment 
of Spikenard, Very Costly,'' 

HER motive, — it was to honor Him, 
and she felt that she wanted to be 
just as extravagant as she could 
in what she gave Him. She did not want 
to give Him something practical and use- 
ful, she wanted to pour out all she had in 
one useless, wasteful sacrifice, — useless 
and wasteful in one sense, but not at all so 



62 MEDITATIONS. 

if it could give Him a moment's pleasure. 

Some would always like to do that. 

Her motive was to please Him. If it 
had not been, He would have known it. 

Our Lord's way of receiving it. He 
was pleased, and if He was pleased, that 
was all she wanted. Why was He 
pleased ? Because she loved Him, and 
that pleases Him always and it must 
have been a real comfort to Him at that 
time. He would not let them find fault 
with Her. He took her part, and so He 
will take our part, if we have loved Him, 
at the day of judgment, as He did her's 
when she was judged by others. 

No sacrifice is wasted if it pleases God. 

''Be Ye Perfect/' 

GOD'S will for us is perfection. Our 
Lord said, "Be ye perfect even 
as your Father which is in Heaven 
is perfect." Perfection consists in doing 
small things perfectly; in offering them 
to God with a pure intention. 

How can God ask perfection of me? 
He would not ask what was impossible, 
therefore it must be possible. 



MEDITATIONS. 63 

Of course it does not mean that our 
perfection can be infinite, perhaps it 
means the kind should be the same as 
God's, and yet perfection is perfection. 
It is not anything else, and we are bound 
to strive after it. 

How can I be perfect ? Only by try- 
ing to make everything that I do as per- 
fect as possible, every act of faith, of sur- 
render ; every piece of work I do. 

I suppose it must be the intention that 
may be perfect with us, and God can 
make the work, poor as it is, perfect too. 
I suppose perfection may mean to do the 
very best one can. 

To try to-day to observe a perfect sil- 
ence about the defects of other people. 

'^Partakers of the Divine Nature.'' 

BY His promises and the knowledge 
of Him, we become partakers of 
the divine nature, escaping the 
corruption of the world. 

That is, through Him our nature is to 
become a part of His divine nature, and 
the result of His divinity working in our 
nature, is to draw us to Him away from 



64 MEDITATIONS. 

the corruption of the world, away from 
death to Hfe. God's nature is to become 
our nature ; that having died to ourselves 
we may live to Him. We become as it 
were a part of God, having His nature, 
and by the strong antiseptic properties of 
His nature, healing, cleansing, turning 
away from the septic poison of this 
world and the flesh, are turned to God 
and that makes us like God; and thus 
transform us into His likeness 

We must know Him before we can imi- 
tate Him, consciously at least ; we must be 
brought to God, and regenerated in bap- 
tism, and get hold of His life in our com- 
munions, and have His forgiveness and 
the knowledge of Him in His word, to 
keep us from corruption, from sin, from 
the world. Only by union with God can 
we be saved from sin. 

I will try not to be cross to-day. 



MEDITATIONS. 65 

''But Let None of You Suffer as an Evil 
Doer/' 

IT seems to me that the lesson of this 
meditation is that God is infinite jus- 
tice as well as infinite mercy; that 
there is suffering which does not deserve 
pity, or not so much that exactly, as 
that the suffering is part of a just pen- 
alty. 

If I sin, I deserve to be punished. 
Why ? I suppose because no one should 
commit sin at any time. But St. Peter 
has just been speaking of the joy of suf- 
fering for Christ and with Him, and of 
the end and reward of that suffering, and 
after all, what is there that can sO' well 
uphold one in suffering as to know that 
it leads to certain glory and happiness. 
God is merciful as well as just, there is 
forgiveness for sin as well as a penalty 
for it. 

That we should be able to avoid the 
suffering that is the result of sin, if we 
truly followed Christ. 

If it is difficult for good people to be 
saved, where shall the wicked appear ? 



66 MEDITATIONS. 

Spiritual Blindness. 

^' IT E that lacketh these things is 

li blind, and cannot see afar off, 
and hath forgotten that he was 
purged from his old sins.'' 

That is we can see only the things that 
hurt ourselves, cannot see God or Heaven 
or Hell or Christ, but only oneself, one's 
own troubles, one's own misery. 

Then that sort of knowledge of God 
which is not real knowledge but only 
from the outside, fails. 

Faith and love and virtue and patience 
do not fail, but knowledge does, and los- 
ing hope for the future, we also lose re- 
membrance of sin, of forgiveness, of all 
our penitence; of penitence which is the 
foundation of all holiness. 

Without a sense of sin, we can have no 
knowledge of virtue. We are blind. We 
cannot see clearly unless we have these 
things upon which I have been medi- 
tating. 

I suppose that only by the practice of 
virtue, and the actual possession of holi- 
ness, can we see clearly either our own 
sins, or God's goodness. Penitence is 



MEDITATIONS. 67 

the foundation of all Christian virtues. 
I must try to learn the relation between 
my sins and God's holiness. 

That only the actual practice of holiness 
can give us clear sight of God or of our- 
selves. 

To try to make an act of self-surren- 
der to-day when I feel badly. 

'^Behold, I Stand at the Door and 
Knock:' 

LET me think of His humility, of His 
patience, of His love, of His humil- 
ity. He takes the position of the 
supplicant, of one who waits to be let in, 
until the one inside chooses to open the 
door to Him. He waits until it shall suit 
us; waits our time, waits outside. 

His patience. How long He waits, 
and waits while He knows what is going 
on inside. He sees and hears all the care- 
lessness, the sin, the indifference. 

His love. That is the reason of His 
humility and His patience. They both 
come from love. He loves the one inside 
who is careless of His presence; who 
keeps the door shut, who humiliates Him 



68 MEDITATIONS. 

by keeping Him waiting, standing there 
so long, and He endures it all for love. 

He loved me while He waited so long 
for me, and He does not mina waiting. 

He does not think of Himself, because 
His heart is so full of love. 

That humility and patience towards 
others are the result of love for Him. 

''If Any Man Hear My Voice, and Open 
the Door/' 

LET me meditate upon the principle of 
conversion and free-will conveyed 
in these words. "If any man hear 
My voice." That is God's part, — the 
voice of the Holy Ghost in the heart. 

God calls the soul, and not only that, 
He calls individual souls. 

He goes to each, and He calls each 
in a way suited to it. He does not 
only send out one great call to all the 
world alike, but He devises ways, and 
when one way does not answer, He 
tries another. 

It is God's place to call, — it is the soul's 
place to answer. 

To hear His voice, at least to open the 
door with one's will, even though the 



MEDITATIONS. 69 

place inside is not ready for Him, that is 
our part. Wretched as that interior is, 
He can make it fit for His abode. 

That conversion means answer, on our 
part, to God's call. 

To try not to say anything severe to- 
day. 

"/ Will Come In to Him,'' 

THE third stage in conversion. First 
the knocking at the door, God's 
call to the soul, then the soul turn- 
ing and answering to the call, and then 
our Lord entering into the heart that is 
thrown open to Him. 

That is all He asks, that we should 
open the door to Him, and I think that 
the opening of the door means surren- 
der. 

It may not in the beginning ; one does 
not know what He will ask of one. Then 
I think that the process of setting to 
rights in that soul begins. 

There must be the cleansing by peni- 
tence, the casting aside of rubbish, of 
everything that does not please God, and 
the bringing in of things that do please 
Him, He Himself directing it all ; direct- 



70 MEDITATIONS. 

ing, guiding, sending trial and suffering 
where they are needed, or giving joy, 
peace, happiness, by His presence. 

To try not to say anything to-day that 
could displease Him. 



"Anoint Thine Eyes With Eye-salve, 
That Thou Mayest See," 

THE light of the Holy Spirit con- 
vincing us of sin, shows us our 
sins, so that seeing them clearly 
we may repent of them, and coming to 
Jesus as penitents may be healed by His 
blood, or rather washed by it. Penitence 
is the great antiseptic of the soul, that 
which heals and cleanses and counteracts 
the septic poison of sin, sin that infects 
and putrefies and leads to death. 

It is eye-salve indeed, that shows one's 
self to the eyes blinded by sin, cleanses 
them that they may see. 

Penitence is the first requisite for holi- 
ness in one who has sinned. How can a 
sinner advance one step on the road to 
holiness without penitence ? 



MEDITATIONS. 7I 

*'All the Angels Fell Before the Throne 
on Their Faces and Worshipped God/' 

LET me try to think of what we mean 
by worship now, — of what it 
means in Heaven ; of the difference 
between now and hereafter. 

I think that to worship God, one must 
feel that one is in His presence, and that 
worship is a different thing from prayer, 
although it is perhaps prayer in one sense. 

Worship is offering something; pour- 
ing out oneself before God. I do not 
think there can be worship without sur- 
render. 

Here worship is interrupted, occa- 
sional, imperfect, by reason of many 
things. 

There it will be perfect, unceasing, 
face to face. That is the great differ- 
ence between then and now. Then we 
shall see God. 



y2 MEDITATIONS. 

''They Shall Hunger no More, Neither 
Thirst any More/' 

LET me try to think what it means 
not to be hungry or thirsty, for 
actual food, or for anything, — to 
have no real need' of one's spiritual, or 
physical, or intellectual life ungratified; 
never to wish for what one cannot get, 
never to be disappointed any more. There 
will be no unsatisfied longings in Heaven, 
not one, however small. 

That can only come by conformity with 
God's will, — because if people in Heaven 
wished for something contrary to His 
will, they could not have it. 

God wills that they should be happy, 
perfectly happy, and perfect happiness is 
only to be found in Him. Still He gives 
other things besides. 

Why, then, is not this world Heaven? 
If we could atain to perfect conformity 
to God's will it seems as though it might 
be. But, no, this world never will be 
Heaven no matter how great sanctity is 
attained to, because it is a place of suflfer- 
ing and of discipline, and in Heaven there 
is neither suflfering nor discipline. 



MEDITATIONS. 73 

To try not to think hardly of any one 
to-day. 

"The Lamb Which is in the Midst of the 
Throne Shall Feed Them." 

THERE is the same idea here, that I 
have found in all these meditations, 
of the all sufficiency of Jesus 
Christ, and as in yesterday's meditation, 
that we can have here in all the suffering of 
this world, the same happiness in Him 
that will make the happiness of Heaven, 
although there, freed from all sorrow, 
pain, and discipline. 

He will feed us there, — He feeds us 
here. He feeds us with Himself, gives 
Himself. 

How easy would it have been for Him 
to have given us things, and Himself to 
have stayed in Heaven. His love for us 
was so great that He wanted to give 
Himself. "He loved me, and gave Him- 
self for m^." 

I will try to think gently of every one 
to-day. 



74 MEDITATIONS. 

''And Shall Lead Them Unto Living 
Fountains of Water/' 

HE shall lead them. God shall lead 
them, lead those who have given 
themselves up to Him. Our Lord 
was very fond of speaking of Himself as 
leading His people. He goes before His 
people to show them the way, and He 
goes with them to help them through it. 
God shall lead those who are in Hea- 
ven to fountains of living waters, so that 
they shall find more than they knew of at 
first, for if God is to lead them, there 
must be development. 

Heaven cannot be a place where every- 
thing is stationary, because as God is in- 
finite there must be infinite progress 
in those who are His, not that they 
can learn to be infinite as He is, 
but that they must be ever learning some- 
thing new of Him, and of His service. 

"Therefore Are They Before the Throne 
of God, and Serve Him,'' 

WHAT is the reward from God of 
service, suffering and death ? 
It is that perfect service that 
people hope for : To be with God and to 



MEDITATIONS. 75 

serve Him perfectly. That is all, but 
that is everything. 

In Heaven there is nothing outside of 
God. 

People must be beautiful in Heaven; 
there cannot be any ugliness in Heaven, 
but it must be the beauty of holiness. 

It will be God's likeness repeated in 
every soul, and the stronger the likeness, 
the greater the beauty ; and the reflection 
in each soul will be different from that in 
any other soul, and yet all will be like 
God. 

''That Victory is His Gift'^ 

OUR Lord says that He will give us 
to sit down on His throne even as 
He overcame and sat down with 
His Father on His throne. He thus re- 
fers everything back to God, and we 
must refer everything back to Him. 
What then remains for us ? 

I think perhaps the reason why the vic- 
tory is a gift, not a right to be demanded, 
is that it is a victory won through grace ; 
the grace that comes from Him, and since 
He gives the grace to win the victory, it 



y6 MEDITATIONS. 

is His, not ours, although we too must 
fight to obtain it. 

It is humihating to one's pride, yet I 
suppose a Christian can never say "/ 
gained the victory." 

I think the way to look at it is as a 
prize. He offers the prize for love, obe- 
dience, patience, courage ; we fight to win 
the prize, and He gives it to us. It is His 
gift, but it is our right also. 

He Himself speaks of the hire for la- 
borers. He gives the opportunity and 
He supplies the grace to use the oppor- 
tunity, and He gives the reward also. 

And what is the reward ? To be with 
Him forever on His throne. 

"To Him That Overcometh.'^ 

THAT then is the end. The end 
of strife, of warfare, and of suf- 
fering. I think Our Lord 
must mean to tell us to look on to the end. 
He gives us hope. It seems to me that 
God has given me this meditation to 
show me how to hope. But to hope for 
whom? For all who suffer; to hope not 
only for the end of suffering but for its 



MEDITATIONS. "Jj 

reward. And what is that reward? To 
sit with Him on His throne. With Him 
in glory ; in His glory who overcame, and 
gave us the power to overcome Hke Him, 
because He gave us grace to try to win 
in a battle of our own. 

He seems to try to make us feel that 
the victory is really ours as well as His. 
It must be ours in will. He cannot fight 
for us unless we let Him. He has shown 
us the way, but it is for us to walk 
in it. 

That He who gives us the victory is 
glad to see us do our part. He who 
knows all the hard places Himself, is able 
to appreciate what we try to do. 

To ask Him often to-day to help me. 

*^ Therefore We Are Buried With Him 
by Baptism Into Death/^ 

I THINK St. Paul was speaking in 
this chapter about death to sin and 
not natural death. "Those who are 
Christ's have crucified the flesh with tRe 
affections and lusts." It means death to 
sin ; to die to sin, and live to God. 

How does baptism bury us to sin ? 
How does His death to sin make us die 



78 MEDITATIONS. 

to sin ? I can only see that when in bap- 
tism we are made a part of Him, we are 
able to die to sin because He died to sin. 
We died in His death as we are to live 
with His life. We must die to ourselves 
that we may live in Him with His life 
not with our own. We must give up our 
life to His life. 

To try to make a complete surrender 
to-day. 

''The Same Afflictions Are Accomplished 

in Your Brethren That Are 

in the World/' 

IN whom ? St. Peter said, in "your 
brethren that are in the world." The 
same afflictions. I think that means 
especially temptations of the devil. The 
roaring lion goes about seeking to de- 
stroy God's people, whom they are to re- 
sist and overcome by the power of faith, 
— faith, not knowledge, or wisdom, or 
powers of mind or body, but by faith. 
Then it is encouraging to know that 
others have also been tried even as we 
are. 

I suppose that if one could remember 
that temptation is one of the conditions 



MEDITATIONS. 79 

of this life, one of the things that every 
Christian person has to undergo, one 
would feel differently about it. 

''Though I Speak With the Tongues of 

Men and of Angels and Have Not 

Charity J I am Nothing/' 

WHAT is Charity, or love in the 
sense which St. Paul meant it; 
without which all words, how- 
ever good in themselves are worthless ? 
It certainly is not a weak toleration for 
others; there is a counterfeit charity as 
well as a true charity. It is not that. 

Charity is love. God is full of it. To 
be like God is the end of our being. Holi- 
ness is the end to be sought for, and 
there can be no holiness without love. 
Therefore when St. Paul spoke of elo- 
quence without charity, he meant what 
he said, that he would be nothing, not 
that his eloquence would be nothing. 

We do not care half enough for our 
own selves. 

We care for our lower selves, but not 
enough for our higher. He says "I am 
nothing;" that God is love, and that, as 



8o MEDITATIONS. 

we must try to be like Him if we are to 
please Him, we must resemble Him in 
love also as far as we can. 

"Charity Suffereth Long and is Kind," 

IN other words is long-suffering. God is 
long-suffering. Let me think for a mo- 
ment of His patience with me. Long 
suffering is only one kind of patience. 
To be long suffering may often be to be 
like God. Patient with one's own trials, 
one's own pain and suffering. To suf- 
fer long if it is God's will to try one with 
long waiting, — to wait for others in hope, 
to trust, I think one must trust in order 
to be long-suffering. 

If one did not believe in God, one 
could not be long-suffering. 

''Seeketh Not Her Own." 

AND what goes before that? "Doth 
* not behave itself unseemly." That 
is, is not rude, or pushing, or loud 
and vulgar. I often am rude, — now I 
suppose that charity is not rude because 
it considers others before itself, — that is 
true tact, true politeness. 



MEDITATIONS. 8l 

Rudeness must come either from ignor- 
ance or selfishness. 

Because ''she does not seek her own." 
Almost all the sin in the world comes 
from selfishness. 

One might say that all sin is selfish- 
ness; all sin comes from seeking some- 
thing for oneself. No wonder St. Paul 
said charity was the greatest of all vir- 
tues, because carried out to its full extent 
it implies and contains them all. 

Charity is not selfish, cannot be selfish ; 
seeketh not her own ; selfishness is always 
seeking its own. 

That charity means true consideration 
for others, because charity is really unsel- 
fish. 

To try not to think bitterly of any one 
to-day. 

^7^ Not Easily Provoked, Thinketh No 
Evil/' 

WHY is charity not easily pro- 
voked? For the same reason 
that we have seen in other ways, 
because charity thinks of others before 
itself. 



82 MEDITATIONS. 

St. Paul does not say that charity is 
never provoked; he says it is not easily 
provoked, because it is just the opposite 
of that pride and vanity which are al- 
ways on the lookout for slights. 

Charity is above all things unsuspic- 
ious, and not having bad and selfish mo- 
tives itself, does not attribute them to 
others. 

Charity thinks no evil of others, be- 
cause it is not evil itself. 

The evil is there just the same, but 
charity is spared the knowledge of a 
great deal of it, just as purity does not 
see impure things nor understand them, 
and so can go free and safely where one 
who knows about wickedness would be 
hurt. 

Thinks no evil, because she herself is 
not evil. 

"For Now We See Through a Glass 
Darkly/' 

NOW we see through the medium of 
our own ignorance, sin and folly ; 
through all that obscures the glory 
of God to our minds, — darkness, uncer- 
tainty, — sometimes so thick that we can- 



MEDITATIONS. 83 

not see Him at all, — at all times obscur- 
ing Him, hiding Him from us. 

Yet He is always there, always the 
same. Perhaps it is to try our faith ; no 
doubt it does try it. But not only that, 
it is the unavoidable result of our natural 
limitations. 

But therij face to face, — We are so 
blind that we cannot see Him, but He 
sees us; sees me at this moment, knows 
how I suffer, how I have suffered, knows 
all; — all my sins, all my troubles, every- 
thing. 

That nothing hides us from God, al- 
though he is hidden from us. 

To try to make an act of surrender in 
the train this afternoon. 

''Nozv Ahideth Faith, Hope, Charity ^ 

FAITH, Hope, Charity. 
Faith, I suppose that one must 
believe in God first of all, before 
one can hope in Him, or love Him ; one 
cannot pray to God unless one realizes 
that He exists. One must surrender one- 
self to God unconditionally. 

Conversion of course is an act of faith, 
but one can believe in God without either 



84 MEDITATIONS. 

hoping in Him or loving Him or anyone 
else. One can believe in God and yet want 
to avoid and hate Him. 

Hope. After conversion and surren- 
der, "Hope/' Hope of forgiveness, hope 
of growing like God, encouragement. I 
suppose people need encouragement at 
the beginning of their conversion. They 
need help. 

Then Charity. Not easy, good nature. 
I am sure St. Paul showed that. He was 
hard and intolerant and cruel before he 
was converted, — very likely he did not 
learn Charity easily; perhaps because he 
knew the cost of it he cared for it so 
much. It is the greatest of all virtues, 
because it includes all others, — because it 
shuts out sin; real charity, real love; — 
love first for God, then for others. 

Love is the greatest of all virtues, and 
the only thing in which we can be like 
God, — for we cannot have God's wisdom 
or power, but we can have some of His 
love. 

I will try not to think bitterly of any 
one to-day. 



MEDITATIONS. 85 

^'The Greatest of These is Charity.'^ 

I HAVE seen in these meditations that 
Charity or Love is the greatest of all 
virtues. Let me try, in this last one 
to gather them up into one, and to see 
first, why it is so, then the result of its 
being so, and the duty of making it mine. 
Why is Charity the greatest of all vir- 
tues ? It is not because they cannot exist 
without it, because they can, — one cair 
have faith and hope, — though I am not 
so sure about hope, — without having 
charity. 

St. Paul says that, when he enumer- 
ates all the things that would be worth- 
less without charity. Yet they are all 
things good in themselves. I think it 
must be because it is impossible to be 
like God without Charity, and the end of 
all virtue is to make us like Him. 

What then comes of this knowledge 
that Charity is the greatest of all virtues 
because it makes us like God ? 

Surely the knowledge of that should 
teach us to try to learn it; to be deter- 
mined to make it ours at any price. 

The duty of doing so. Surely that is 



86 MEDITATIONS. 

plain enough, because it is one's first 
duty to please God, and without charity 
it is impossible to please Him. One can- 
not please God by setting up one's own 
patterns of virtue, entirely unlike Him, 
and pleasing oneself in what one offers 
to Him. 

One must please God in God's way. 
Charity is the greatest of all, because it 
is impossible either to please God or to 
grow like Him without it, and the more 
difficult it is to get, the more foreign to 
one's natural disposition, so much the 
more is it necessary, so much the more 
worth having. 

I will try not to think bitterly of any 
one to-day. 

''Your Labor is Not in Vain in the Lord." 

NO disappointment there with God. 
I think if there is one thing 
more plain than another about this 
world, it is that it is a world of disap- 
pointment, and what is more miserable 
than disappointment, — wasted trouble, 
labour lost, hopes disappointed. 

But there, there is no disappointment; 
no one can never be disappointed in God. 



MEDITATIONS. 87 

If people think that they are disap- 
pointed in God, it is because they are 
seeking Him for something outside of 
Himself. 

If I am really seeking God for Him- 
self, I can never be disappointed, and in 
Him, all other disappointments will be 
made up. 

''The Sting of Death is Sin/' 

LET me try to meditate upon how sin 
is the sting of death. Sin means 
spiritual corruption. Death brings 
physical corruption with it. Suppose 
one to be actually free from mortal 
sin, a saint with the least possible stain 
of sin upon his holiness, yet still there is 
the consciousness of sin, and a conscious- 
ness stronger I suppose in such a per- 
son, than in one who really is more sin- 
ful. 

I know that some of the best people 
have had a great fear of death, and some 
of the worst have had very little. Perhaps 
St. Paul means something deeper than 
mere individual sin, — the sin of the race, 
the old instinct of evil ; perhaps it is that 



88 MEDITATIONS. 

which makes us fear death. Then it 
would seem that in people who have the 
sense of sin fully developed, there is less 
fear of death than in perfectly savage 
races. Yet look at the cowardice of the 
lower races. Still our Lord who was per- 
fectly sinless, felt it too, but He felt it 
because He felt our sins. 

The sin of all human nature was laid 
on Him. He felt the bitterness of death 
more than any one else has ever done. 

At least we may believe this, that He 
knows all the bitterness of death that we 
can know, though He could not know the 
fear of the impenitent sinner; but we need 
not know that, since He died for us, and 
since He gives us safety and protection 
from it by His Passion. 

^^Not as the World Giveth, Give I Unto 
Your 

OUR Lord admits that the world 
does give. He must know that a 
great many people prefer the 
world's gifts to His. 

The world's gifts are things that any 
one might like. His gifts are of no value 



Meditations. §9 

to any one who does not love Him. No 
one who does not love Him can have 
them, because He only gives them to His 
own who can value them and use them. 

He gives what no one else can give to 
His own, He gives Himself. 

Surely He is worth more than any- 
thing the world can give. But, as in so 
many meditations lately, I see in this that 
the measure of our love for Him is the 
measure of our spiritual life. Peace, joy, 
hope, patience, all depend upon how much 
we love Him. 

That power to love Him is the first 
great gift, upon which everything else 
depends. 

''Peace I Leave With You, My Peace I 
Give Unto You,'' 

HIS peace, — not ours; not as the 
world gives. 

The world can never give 
peace. It may give pleasure and happi- 
ness, — but not peace ; at least not the kind 
that He gives. 

The world's peace is wholly dependent 
on circumstances. His peace is independ- 
ent of them. His peace is the greatest of 



90 • MEDITATIONS. 

all possessions. How then can we get that 
peace ? Not by asking for it, or wishing 
for it, or trying to have it. 

There is only one way of getting it, 
and that is by entire trust in Him. 

The measure of our trust in Him will 
be the measure of our peace. 

A little trust will bring a little peace. 
Absolute trust, perfect peace. 

If I really trusted God, nothing could 
disturb my peace of mind. 

To pray again for peace to-day. 

''Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled:' 

HOW could they keep their hearts 
from being troubled ? Only in 
one way, — ^by faith in Him. Oui 
Lord demands an eflfort on our part. 

He does not say, From the moment 
you believe in Me you will never be trou- 
bled about anything again. I suppose by 
"trouble'' our Lord meant worry, and 
surely there is nothing more unsuitable 
for a Christian than worrying. 

To worry means to distrust God. Our 
Lord certainly cannot be pleased with a 
worrying person. He wants me to have 
faith in Him and not to worry. 



MEDITATIONS. QI 

No Christian has a right to worry, be- 
cause it displeases God, and it is so bad 
for one's peace. I think people who have 
faith in God, often worry simply be- 
cause they forget Him. They do not 
realize His love for them. Our Lord 
seems to ask us not to worry, not to for- 
get Him. He wants to take our care 
upon Himself. 

To ask Him to give me His peace. 

''Him That Betrayeth Me/' 

OUR Lord speaks of Judas at the last 
supper. Jesus was the only one 
who knew what Judas was think- 
ing about. The apostles did not suspect 
Judas, or they would not have asked what 
they did. His sin was hidden from 
everyone except the Lord and himself. 
No one else there would have done it. 

Judas did not ask ''Who shall betray 
Thee ?'' — ^he knew that he would do it, — 
his heart was full of wickedness. 

The others were weak and sinful 
enough, but there was some love in their 
hearts, and in his there was none. 

I think that that was what ruined 
Judas, that he had no love in his heart. 



g2 MEDITATIONS. 

If he had had a particle, he could not have 
done what he did. Love was driven out 
of his heart by covetousness, envy and 
sin. Some love would have kept him 
from his sin. Some love would have kept 
him from covetousness and envy and 
pride. 

Judas fell into sin and lost his soul 
through lack of love. 

''This is My Body/' 

THEY made their first communion 
then. He gave Himself to them 
with His own hands. That com- 
munion did not seem to do them much 
good. Why ? Because of lack of grace 
in themselves. Because they had not re- 
ceived the Holy Ghost. Our Lord knew 
that, and yet He gave Himself to them 
knowing it, just as now He gives Him- 
self to people who do not know Him. I 
think this shows the two parts of the 
Sacrament, — what is received, and the 
state of the one who receives it. 

The same bread and wine, — the same 
Body and Blood to St. John and to Judas. 
Both of them there made their first, Judas 
his only, communion. 



MEDITATIONS. 93 

Judas is an example of one who made 
a bad communion. Better never have 
made any communion at all, than such a 
one as that. 

. See the hardening effects of bad, care- 
less communions.. 

Our communions may be very danger- 
ous. 

''Then All the Disciples Forsook Him 
and Fled." 

ALL, everyone, even Peter who had 
said so much of his love for Him ; 
even John who had seemed to love 
Him so intensely; everyone of them. 
And they all went just when He needed 
them most. They all went to sleep when 
He was bearing His agony in the gar- 
den. His suffering was not enough to 
keep them awake. He knows then what 
/ feel, because He has felt it Himself. 

He had not even a dog to be faithful 
to Him.* No possible desolation that I 
can feel can equal His. 



*She had a dog, a beautiful Irish Setter, remarkable even 
among faithful dogs for its devotion and unforgetting love. 
He died a few months after her death, of the loneliness of a 
life without his mistress. 



94 MEDITATIONS. 

^' Judas Betrayest Thou the Son of Man 
With a Kiss r 

THE betrayal — the manner of it; 
Christ's way of receiving. 

Do / betray Him ? He was be- 
trayed by one of His own disciples in the 
most treacherous, cruel way that the 
wickedness of the devil could contrive. 
He felt it most keenly. He was hurt by 
it cruelly just as we should have been. 
He did not treat it as if it was of no con- 
sequence, and could not trouble Him. 
Yet He had endured Judas all these 
three years knowing what was to be the 
end. 

I think Judas is an example of a relig- 
ious sinner. He is the type of all who 
separate themselves from worldly people 
and are fond of religion, of prayer even, 
and yet do things that common, worldly 
people would scorn to do. 

Every sin committed by one of His 
own people is another betrayal. 

I am betraying Him every time I com- 
mit a deliberate sin. 



MEDITATIONS. 95 

''Then Did They Spit in His Face, and 
Buffeted Him/' 

LET me remember in this meditation 
that I am in the presence of the 
same person to whom these things 
happened, — that He sees all my thoughts 
of Him, and that it is only the thought of 
those who love Him that can be of a kind 
to please Him. That there may be a 
dreadful insult to Him in the way that I 
think of those insults. They offered Him 
that insult, and He bore it for my sake. 

How does this apply to me ? I should 
learn to bear rudeness as He bore what 
was much worse than anything that can 
happen to me. Certainly what the Mas- 
ter could bear, the servant should not 
complain of. 

All sin, all disobedience, all neglect of 
Him is of precisely the same character 
as the actions of those men, yet how often 
I disobey, and in how many ways. 

That He has to bear insults from me 
now, as He bore them then from the sol- 
diers. 



96 MEDITATIONS. 

''This Mortal Must Put on Immortality," 

WHEN this shall have come to pass, 
then shall we see that "death is 
swallowed up in Victory." 

Death swallowed up in Victory. Let 
me try to think of what that means in 
itself. How is it possible that it should 
be done ? 

Death then shall be utterly done away 
with. It shall have no more existence at 
all. No more death — only life forever 
and ever with Him; but the value of 
everlasting life with Him, depends wholly 
upon our love for Him. 

If we love some one or something bet- 
ter than Him, that can spoil our happi- 
ness. It must be Jesus only ; no one must 
divide my heart with Him. 

There is so much selfish love ; love that 
demands a return ; love that loves for its 
own sake, and there can be no victory 
over death except in Him except in lov- 
ing Him for Himself. 

To be sure, death can be met with per- 
fect courage, firmness and even scorn. 

People have shown that they scorned 
death, but death conquered them just the 



MEDITATIONS. 97 

same. They died, although they died 
bravely. But in Him death itself shall die. 
And we each of us in Him shall ac- 
tually overcome, not only because He 
overcame death Himself once, but be- 
cause He overcomes it in us ; because we 
are part of Him; members of His body, 
of His flesh and of His spirit . 

*'0h Death, Where is Thy Sting ? O 
Grave, Where is Thy Victory V 

ST. PAUL has gone in spirit through 
the darkness of sin and death and 
now he comes out into the light of 
day, — the light that comes from Jesus 
Christ, that can never be darkened, the 
life that can never die where death is 
swallowed up in victory. 

Then he says, ''Oh Death, where is thy 
sting?" 

Where is the pain of death to one that 
believes wholly in Him ? What is the 
sting of death ? Fear, surely, and sin. 

We shall then never be afraid of any- 
thing again, but why should we be 
afraid now ? 

We are just as much in God's hand 
now, as we shall be then. 



98 MEDITATIONS. 

I do not think St. Paul could have been 
afraid to die, death was already swal- 
lowed up in victory for him, as it ought 
to be for us, and yet the flesh is so weak. 

He does not promise it to us now, but 
afterwards. "Then it shall come to pass," 
when death has been suffered, fully gone 
through with ; endured to the last bitter- 
ness ; one cannot say it has no sting, un- 
less one has felt that truth. 

''Come Unto Me/' 

LET me try to think who it is whom 
our Lord calls to Him, and why He 
calls them. 

All those who labor; those who are 
heavy laden; those whose burdens are 
too heavy for them; those who are 
weighed down with care, trouble, respon- 
sibility or worry. 

He says ''all," because there is no trou- 
ble that He cannot lighten and no burden 
that He will not share. 

All that He asks is that we should 
need Him. 

He does not call those who are well 
and strong and rich: — He calls the poor 



MEDITATIONS. 99 

and the sick and the weak and the wor- 
ried and the broken-down, but we must 
come. 

He cannot help us if we will not let 
Him, and we must let Him help us in His 
own way, and not in ours. 

Why does He call ? Because He 
wants to help us; because the call must 
come from Him before the answer can 
come from us. 

He knows that He can help us, and He 
wants to help us by giving us rest. 

Perfect surrender would be perfect 
rest. 

Perfect surrender would be rest be- 
cause it would be to will only what God 
wills. 

To ask Him often to-day to give me 
rest. 

''Not My Will, But Thine, Be Done." 

LET me try to think, who said this. 
Plow it applies to us ? 

Yet in our Lord's case, as in 
ours, — although His will was conformed 
to His Father's as we cannot even imag- 
ine, — that was Christ's life, His own 
feeling, both of body and soul. 



lOO MEDITATIONS. 

As we each of us feel our own pain, 
He felt His, pain of body and pain of 
soul. He also felt pain that there was no 
escaping, and part of the pain was that He 
knew what was coming, the desertion of 
all his friends, and all that was before 
Him. 

He was to be left entirely alone. 

How strange it seems that it could 
have been God's will, that Christ should 
have suffered thus. 

He loved His Father so much and His 
Father loved Him, and yet that was His 
Father's will for Him. 

Yet we doubt God's love for us when 
He lets us suffer. 

Certainly I should never doubt God's 
love for me because He lets me suffer and 
sends me increasing suffering, when I re- 
member Christ's sufferings. 

^'Looking Unto Jesus," 

WHAT does that mean ? It means 
to make Him the end of every- 
thing that we do; to look to 
Him for approval, for help, for comfort; 
to hope only to attain to Him in the end. 



MEDITATIONS. lOI 

No one can go wrong who looks to 
Him. 

Jesus can make no mistakes. He 
never can mislead anyone. 

He is never indifferent and unkind, or 
cold and careless. Why ? Because He 
loves us. 

Who cared for me and gave Himself 
for me. 

How foolish to let some human being 
get between Him and us. 

''The Author and Finisher of Our FaithJ' 



THEbe^ 
only — i 



beginning and the end.'' Jesus, 
always. 
We thrust our desires into His 



peace. 

We mix human affection with our love 
for Him. 

It is so hard to detach one-self from 
human love, human feeling and desire for 
sympathy, — but He does not want di- 
vided hearts. He wants all of one's heart 
without a rival. 

If He is to be the bridegroom of one's 
soul, how can one divide one's soul with 
others beside Him ? 



I02 MEDITATIONS. 

Friendship, love, are all right, but noth- 
ing that usurps His place. 

Who cares for us as He does ? And yet 
we care more for others than we do for 
Him. 

^^The Joy That Was Set Before Him/' 

WHAT was that joy ? It was not 
the joy of Heaven, because He 
had always had that, — it was, 
especially to glorify God ; to save us ; 
and to have us for Himself. After God's 
glory, we were the joy He set before 
Himself. 

We were His joy, yet how He could 
take pleasure in us I do not see, — in such 
weak faith, such cold love, love that 
shrinks from pain and death when pain 
and death would bring us the sooner to 
Him. 

He did not shrink when He died for us, 
yet even He needed to set before Him 
the joy that was to come when He had 
endured the present that was so hard. 

We should look to the joy of being 
with Him, — as He did to the joy of sav- 
ing us. 



MEDITATIONS. IO3 

''That We Might be Partakers of His 
Holiness^ 

I BELIEVE God tests, disciplines us by 
sufifering that we may attain to holi- 
ness. 

It is impossible to imagine any holi- 
ness that does not come from Him, any 
which is different from His. 

He disciplines us that we may be like 
Jesus. 

Now I am not like Him in anything 
else. 

I could never be like Him in any one 
point except in suffering, and if God 
gives me that opportunity to be like Him 
in the one point which is possible for me, 
surely I ought to be glad. 

"Thou hast made us for thyself, and 
restless is our heart until it rests in 
Thee.'' 

''More Than These r 

THEN He asked Peter if he cared 
more for Him than for those. 
What did He mean ? What did 
that show of Him ? I think it might be 
taken in two ways. Whether Peter loved 



104 MEDITATIONS. 

Him more than he did any one else or if 
he loved Him more than any one of 
the others loved Him ? 

It might have meant, Peter do you 
care more for me than you do for any 
one else, or, Peter do you care more for 
me than any of these others do who have 
not denied me ; who have not sinned and 
have not been forgiven as you have, — 
either of these or both. 

What do / learn of our Lord Himself 
by that question to St. Peter ? That He 
wishes to be first in His people's hearts. 

No one asks such a question as that 
who does not care about being loved. 

He wants to be first with each of us. 

He has the right to be first, and He is 
not satisfied unless He is. 

What a comfort it is, to know that He 
really cares. 

If He did not care for us. He would 
not mind whether we loved Him most 
or not. 



MEDITATIONS. IO5 

Entire Trust, 

SURELY unless I can trust God en- 
tirely and make an absolute surren- 
der of myself to Him, He cannot 
do with me what He would; what per- 
haps He is trying to do now. 

God can not drag one to Himself 
against one's will, and I am probably hin- 
dering His work in my soul by lack of 
trust in Him. 

Surely that is the lesson I have learned 
from Him to-day, — the necessity of abso- 
lute surrender, — of being willing to be 
blind, of not seeking to understand or 
to see anything for myself. 

I will try to make mental acts of sur- 
render often to-day. 

'^Making Our Election Sure," 

I HAVE been meditating on the things 
necessary for the spiritual life; on 
what God expects of us. Now let 
me try to think of the other side, of the 
result of these various struggles, suffer- 
ings, graces at last perhaps attained to, in 
some degree ; the result of growing like 
God; that it does make one safe. 



Io6 MEDITATIONS. 

God must save finally, a soul that loves 
Him, and tries in all ways to serve Him. 
That makes the soul safe. 

To be so much a part of God, that what 
He wills, we will will also, and therefore 
that we have all that we will because we 
have what He wills. 

I do know that, however it may be 
about the cause of suffering, it is quite 
certain that God makes me able to bear 
it after I have got it. 

I do not know why it comes, or how, 
or where from ; I do know that it is an 
opportunity of pleasing God, and of liv- 
ing up to what I could never have at- 
tained without it. 

To try to-day when I feel pain, to of- 
fer it to Him. 

'^Lest That Which is Lame Be Turned 

Out of the Way; But Rather 

Be Healed," 

WHAT went before this would seem 
to mean. Do not be discour- 
aged, do not be turned aside 
from God. Whoever wrote this epistle 
knew that there is great danger of losing 
the benefit of suffering. 



MEDITATIONS. IO7 

What a dreadful thing to be hindered 
by it, to let what should bring one nearer 
to God drive one away from Him, — to let 
that which is weak be hindered by just 
that which makes it weak, that which suf- 
fers by suffering, that which is tried by 
trial. How then may we ''rather be 
healed;" how can that be accomplished? 

Solely by one's own will conforming 
itself to the will of God. 

By just so much as our will is His, can 
we go on and be healed. 

To yield one-self wholly to God's will, 
that is the end of one's life, of all that 
one can do, or learn or be. 

To give oneself to God. 

^^But Live According to God in the 
Spirit:' 

LET me try to think what it is to live 
according to God, not by outward 
rule, but in the spirit; not with a 
religion of the world, but of one's own 
heart. 

In order to do that, one must give one- 
self to God. One can live a life that 
seems to be religious and go to church a 



I08 MEDITATIONS. 

great deal, and do a great deal of charit- 
able and philanthropic work, without giv- 
ing himself to God at all; without even 
knowing what it is to live according to 
His spirit ; that is, to let one-self be guided 
by the Holy Ghost, — and one can live a 
life that seems utterly useless, without 
ability to do any work at all, which may 
yet be one steady act of obedience to His 
will. 

That is the old lesson that is so hard 
to learn, — that obedience is better than 
sacrifice; that it is, to do just the one 
thing that God gives us to do, that is His 
will for us, not anything, however much 
more important it may seem to us, that 
is not His will. 

To do God's will, to suffer, to receive 
all in obedience to Him, that is what He 
asks of many people. 

Let me rest on the truth that God 
takes all the responsibility of my life upon 
Himself. 

I will make an act of self-surrender 
to-day. 



MEDITATIONS. lOQ 

''The End of All Things is at Hand" 

THE end of what ? Of earthly 
things, — the beginning of heaven- 
ly things. I think probably St. 
Peter meant the end of all things in 
the sense that one says, the end of 
summer; not that there was to be noth- 
ing at all after that, but that things were 
to be different. The end of the present 
order of things. 

But we cannot end. No matter how 
different our surroundings may be, we 
must go on forever and ever. 

Then if we really belong to Him, what 
difference will it make to us what are the 
accidents of our surroundings here in our 
earthly lives ? 

There are two things that are eternal, 
God and one's soul. 

Whatever else may change, God can- 
not change. 

'^Servants of Righteousness," 

LET me try to think what it means to 
be a servant of righteousness ; how 
I can be one now. 
What is a servant of righteousness and 
who is called to be one ? 



no MEDITATIONS. 

It means to do God's will in the place 
where He has put one, 

I have to do God's will with the things 
He has given me. 

The very first duty of a servant is 
obedience, — to do good and to be good, 
and nothing more is required of me. 

To be discontented with the place God 
has put one in, is to be disobedient to 
God. 

How can I serve God as I am ? By 
doing what I can for others, and doing 
it even if it seems so little as not to be 
worth doing, and especially by surrender 
of my will to God's will. 

That my duty is to be obedient to God 
in my own place. 

*'That I Should Rejoice to be a Partaker 
of His Sufferings/^ 

CERTAINLY I should rejoice that 
He has given me the opportunity 
to be like Him, — yet does He not 
always give that in every condition of 
life ? Yes, — in some ways, but as His 
was a suffering life, it seems that a suf- 
fering life can more easily follow Him; 



MEDITATIONS. Ill 

and in suffering if we can only bear it in 
a way that pleases Him, we must have a 
bond of union with Him, that is missing 
otherwise, even if there were no other rea- 
son, because it is so much more complete 
to share everything with Him than only 
a part. Perhaps even, *'that we may fill 
up the measure of the sufferings of 
Christ." 

That we ought to be glad that we can 
understand His sufferings in some little 
faint way by having suffered ourselves. 

To say often to-day ''I will fear no 
evil for Thou art with me." 

''Not My Will But Thine Be Done/' 

LET me try to think, who said this ? 
How that applies to us ? 

Yet in our Lord's case, as in 
ours, although His will was conformed 
to the Father's as we cannot even imag- 
ine, yet still that was Christ's own life, 
His own feeling, both of body and soul. 
As we each of us feel our own pain, 
He felt His; pain of body and pain of 
soul ; He felt the individuality which there 
is no escaping, and part of His pain was 



112 MEDITATIONS. 

that He knew what was coming, the 
desertion of all His friends, and all that 
was before Him. He was to be left en- 
tirely alone. How strange it seems that 
it could have been God's will, that He 
should have suffered thus. 

He loved His Father so much, and His 
Father loved Him, and yet that was His 
Father's will for Him. Yet we doubt 
God's love for us when He lets us suf- 
fer. 

Certainly I should never feel any doubt 
about God's love for me because He lets 
me suffer, and sends me increasing suf- 
fering, when I remember Christ's suffer- 
ings. 

''Alive Unto God/' 

LET me try to think what it means to 
be alive to God. 

There must be God. If God does 
not exist we cannot live to Him. God is 
not the God of the dead but of the living. 
It is a time of darkness and gloom to 
me. I cannot feel God's presence or His 
love, — I can only feel my own sin. I 
know I deserve punishment, — I want to 



MEDITATIONS. II 3 

surrender myself, — to live to God here. 
This means to Hve in Him forever. I do 
not know how, but God knows. 

He does not ask me to understand. He 
is going to do it all for me. 

It is His business, — not mine. All I 
have to do is to trust Him. 

It is my place to trust, and His to take 
care of me. 

To say very often to-day "I will fear 
no evil." 

'Tollow Thou Me:' 

FOLLOW Thou Me,"— but I am 
not thinking of Him often. St. 
Peter was a person who would 
not wholly mind his own affairs.. Our 
Lord had just been telling Him to feed 
His sheep and His lambs. That was 
the work He gave Peter to do and that 
work and the pleasing of his Master was 
enough for him. It was nothing to him 
what St. John was to do. 

So we have no need to think of any- 
thing else but our own work, because fol- 
lowing Him means everything. 

He does not ask us to originate any- 
thing for ourselves, it is enough to fol- 



114 MEDITATIONS. 

low Him and then we can always please 
Him, and please Him everywhere. 

No one can do any more than that, and 
if we do that, nothing more can be asked 
of us. ''Though I walk through the val- 
ley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear 
no evil, for Thou are with me." 

He goes first. He does not ask us to 
find out the way for ourselves through 
the gate of death, of pain and of suffer- 
ing. 

That the only safe path for us is the 
one that He shows us. 

Christ Loves Us as God Loves Him. 

DID God spare Christ suffering? Let 
me try to think how God loves 
Him. God loves Him more than 
we can have any idea of, and it must have 
grieved Him to see Him suffer. Yet He 
spared Him nothing even to the last and 
most dreadful thing of leaving Him alone 
for a while, and Christ loves us in the 
same way. 

Therefore His love does not spare us 
suffering. 

His is not the kind of love that makes 
things easy, though He makes them safe. 



MEDITATIONS. II 5 

God could not help loving Christ, but 
how can He love us, especially me ? 

He loves us because He sees us as we 
may be. 

He sees our possibilities. He does not 
make things easy for us. He wants to 
glorify us. He wants us to be perfectly 
happy, even as He is. 

To ask Him often to-day to help me. 

'^He That Hath Suffered in the Flesh 
Hath Ceased From Sin/' 

LET me try to think what this means. 
It cannot mean that suffering in the 
flesh, mere suffering, is of such 
great merit as to do away with sin on the 
part of the one who suffers. It must of 
course mean death. Those whose bodily 
suffering and death are over, and who, 
dying with the same mind as Christ, will- 
ing to die, willing also to suffer with 
Him, are at last safe from sin; they at 
last have ceased from sin, — no more sin 
to be confessed, no more sin whereby to 
be kept from God, all ended, done with 
forever and ever. Let me think what it 
would mean to be free from sin. 



Il6 MEDITATIONS. 

There can be no more sin for one who 
has died in Christ. 

''The Last Adam Was Made a Quicken- 
ing Spirit/^ 

MAN as he is naturally, is of the 
earth, earthy. What is it to be of 
the earth ? The earth is not all 
bad. It does not seem possible to believe 
that all human instincts, tastes and de- 
sires are wrong, but perhaps they can be 
regarded as the soil in which heavenly 
things should be planted. Perhaps that 
is the answer to what has puzzled me so 
much, why there are so many good peo- 
ple who have no spiritual life. They are 
living souls without the quickening 
spirit; of the earth, seeing nothing, 
and wishing and hoping for nothing be- 
yond it. 

The Lord from Heaven, He who 
taught His people to suffer, who taught 
them to love and welcome that which is 
most dreaded by the natural and the 
earthy. His people cannot be of the earth, 
earthy, for if they are really His, they 
must partake of His nature. 



MEDITATIONS. 117 

*'Let Us Eat and Drink; for To-morrow 
We Die:' 

YES, — of what use were all St. Paul's 
labors, fastings, sufferings, if 
Christ were not risen, if death 
were not to be destroyed ? 

All thrown away. Why ? Surely an 
atheist would say that people should try 
to improve the condition of the human 
race by avoiding temptation, or rather by 
conquering it. 

We are apt to think God asks more 
of us than of any one else. What then 
is the difference between St. Paul's mo- 
tives and those of one of the Stoics ? 
There lies the difference now between the 
work of Christians, and that of non- 
Christian philanthropists. 

But to let that go and go on to the sec- 
ond part. What would it all advantage 
Him or us ? Let us eat and drink for 
to-morrow we die. I think that applies 
particularly to me. Let me think what 
it would mean to me, now, to have no 
hope beyond this life. 

It seems to me that it is the greatest 
possible manifestation of God's love that 



Il8 MEDITATIONS. 

He should give us that motive, the hope 
of eternal life; that He does not ask us 
to serve without hope. He holds it out 
to us because He loves us. God does not 
demand of us service without hope. 

To try to make a full surrender going 
down in the train. 

^'The Last Enemy That Shall Be De 
stroyed is Death/' 

DEATH is an enemy, but death shall 
be destroyed. It shall exist no 
more. Let me try to meditate 
upon the fact that death is an enemy. I 
know it is, — every living being tries to 
avoid death. We fight against it as long 
as we can, — keep ourselves alive as long 
as we can. It makes the bravest tremble, 
sometimes, and it is perfectly inevit- 
able, — there is no escaping it. 

But a time will come when there shall 
be no more death. When the devil and sin 
are conquered, perhaps partly through us, 
then death, since death is the result of 
sin, will be conquered also. When sin is 
ended, death can exist no longer. 

Certainly that means endless life, be- 



MEDITATIONS. II9 

cause if there were any end, it would 
mean death. 

''It is Sown a Natural Body; it is Raised 
a Spiritual Body/' 

THERE is a natural body and there 
is a spiritual body, and our Lord 
said that a spirit had not flesh and 
bones as He had after His resurrection. 

A spiritual body cannot suffer pain, 
cannot know disease, or agony, or death. 
I suppose, too, that a spiritual body must 
to a certain extent at least be the result 
of one's spiritual life ; and if one's spir- 
itual life is weak and defective, and de- 
formed by sin, one's spiritual body must 
show it, just as one's natural body shows 
the effect of disease. 

I think that it is impossible for us to 
know what that body will be like, or how it 
will differ from this one, but it must be the 
result of one's spiritual life here, and it 
seems to me that the only hope for me not 
to be deformed and wretched in the next 
life, will be in years of suffering, in grow- 
ing ever more like Jesus. 

To try to make an act of surrender 
going down in the train. 



I20 MEDITATIONS. 

''How Are the Dead Raised Up" 

THAT is the question of doubt, — not 
of faith, because faith would not 
ask how God can do anything, — • 
it is sufficient for it that He has done it 
or will do it. How ? Why ? How can 
God do it ? Why does God allow sin, 
death and misery ? The eflfort of the 
human mind to understand God's ways, 
to understand how God can do things is 
utter folly. No wonder St. Paul says 
that. What could be greater foolishness 
than that ; to try to measure God's power 
by our comprehension. To refuse to 
believe anything we cannot understand. 
We cannot understand, but we can trust; 
trust God generously, absolutely, and 
then God does give some comprehension 
of His mysteries. 

He does give knowledge after obe- 
dience, although He will never give it to 
pride and disobedience. 

God gives to humility what is impos- 
sible to pride. 

By no reaching, no effort, can the hu- 
man intellect force God to explain Him- 



MEDITATIONS. 121 

self. But He shows Himself to those 
who love Him, 

We must give ourselves to God in ab- 
solute surrender, before He will show 
Himself to us. 

To try to keep my resolution perfectly 
to-day. 

''So Also is the Resurrection of the 
Dead:' 

LIKE what ? What is the resurrec- 
tion of the dead like ? Like the grain 
that falls into the earth and dies : — 
like it, but not like it. Like it in as much 
as that it is of the same kind. Unlike it 
in as much as it is not the same, — not 
the same natural body, like the same old 
grain, but the same spiritually; differ- 
ent and yet not different. The grain is 
always the same. If wheat is planted, 
wheat comes up, — but thus we always 
bring up against the mystery of death. 

Death is a mystery ; there is no getting 
away from that. God has the key to it, 
but we have not. We do not understand 
it, and we never shall in this life. But 
He knows it all the time. We have to 
trust in Him. 



122 MEDITATIONS. 

That surrender to His will is the only 
way to meet death. 

To try to keep my resolution to-day. 

''It is Sown in Corruption/' 

ST. PAUL must have meant the body, 
but perhaps not, because the mind 
also seems to decay. What can be 
more horrible, more hideous than the con- 
dition of a body dead of disease, of my 
disease for instance; sown in such cor- 
ruption. People only want to get it out 
of the way; no one can endure the poor 
body to be about at all. Suppose I die 
of cancer, — that will be my state. 

Then, afterwards, that will all be 
changed forever, — no more decay, — no 
more disease, nothing that can in any 
way beget distress or disgust. A body 
that cannot die, or be ill, or suffer; that 
cannot be hurt ever again, — incorrupti- 
ble. 

I think St. Paul must have seen much 
of disease to make him feel that so 
strongly. 

Then this miserable body of mine is 
only an instrument to be used for a time. 



MEDITATIONS. I23 

I can suffer with it, I can glorify God with 
it, and then when that is all done with, 
God will change it for one that cannot 
suffer. 

How sorry then shall I be perhaps that 
this one did not suffer more. 

To try and keep my resolution to-day. 

''After That Ye Have Suffered Awhile, 
Make You Perfect." 

A SUFFERING people, with a cruci- 
fied God. Shall / then wish to es- 
cape from suffering ? 

"After you have suffered awhile," — 
that is the keynote always, — a while, — 
only for a while. God sees the end all 
the time. I think that is the reason why 
our Lord can bear to look on and see us 
suffer, because He knows the result. 

As God sees the trial. He sees the end 
of trial. He sees the agony, the misery, 
the pain, the disappointment, but He sees 
the patience, the obedience, the love that 
rises over all trials, the faith that trusts 
Him to the end, and, as He sees those, 
He thinks that our souls were worth 
dying for. 



124 MEDITATIONS. 

He sees the growing likeness to Him- 
self. 

Human nature is greatest when it is 
most tried ; faith and love and obedience 
to God in bitter pain and suffering are 
greater than anything that can come in 
any other way. 

To try to make this day a time for 
bringing my will into conformity with 
God's will in all things, and especially in 
the matter of spiritual help. 

To try to trust Him to-day in my 
worldly affairs. 

^'Spiritual Loneliness." 

BUT perhaps it is God's will not to 
take away this trial or to give me 
any comfort at all, — then all I can 
do is to surrender my will in that. Then 
perhaps it ought not to be a trial at all, 
but an honor and a special privilege. If 
God Himself is willing to direct me, — 
then see what I am doing when I shrink 
from His leading. I am actually telling 
Him that I would rather have help from 
some one else, freedom from His will for 
me. 



MEDITATIONS. 125 

He does not ask me to think what is 
right for others. 

There are two courses open for me, — » 
only two, but I have got to take one of 
them. I can let the sins of other people 
drive me away from God, or I can let 
them help to bring me nearer to Him. 

I must choose for myself whether to let 
my situation, just as it is, be a means of 
my growing nearer to God or of driving 
me away from Him ; the responsibility is 
mine. 

To pray every night through Advent, 
to-morrow, and on Christmas Day for 
strength to choose to be united with Him, 
all the more closely by the failure of all 
other help. 

^^Let Them That Suffer Commit the 

Keeping of Their Souls to Him as 

Unto a Faithful Creator," 

WHO is it to whom St. Peter says 
these words ? To one who is 
suffering "according to God's 
will," and he says that he should commit 
himself to God as to one who is to be 
trusted, — "as to a faithful Creator." 



126 MEDITATIONS. 

Let me try to think then what it means 
to commit one's-self to God. I suppose it 
means to give one's-self up to God, — in 
other words to do what I am always try- 
ing to do, — to surrender myself. 

In the first place, surrender to God 
must be unconditional, — absolute, and it 
cannot be that unless one has faith in 
God's faithfulness. 

Because I suffer, I should surrender 
myself to God. It is not possible that 
suffering should please God in itself, but 
the way that we bear it, certainly may 
please Him. 

It is the will to bear patiently that 
pleases Him, — not the seeing us suffer. 

To ask Him to help me when I feel 
pain to-day. 

''Get Thee Behind Me, Satan/' 

LET me think when it was that Our 
Lord said these words; to whom 
He said them ; that the Devil is the 
same now as then. 

It was after the forty days' fast ; aftei 
the two successfully resisted temptations. 
He had been tried in body and mind. 



MEDITATIONS. 12/ 

To whom did He say them ? To 
Satan, — to the personal devil. Satan is 
a real person as much as any one. He is 
one who knows the human soul very well, 
but he knows it only from the outside, — 
he never had a human soul : but our Lord 
had a human soul. 

Christ had all our human nature ex- 
cept sin, and He knows us, not as the 
devil knows us from observation, but be- 
cause He is one of us, and being one of 
us, He knows all our temptations as well 
as if they were His, — and He can con- 
quer the devil for us, but He must do it 
in us and not without us. 

Weak, ill, miserable as I am, / can be 
the means of His gaining another victory 
over Satan. 

To say "Get thee behind me," when I 
am tempted to-day. 

^'God Resisteth the Proud, But Giveth 
Grace to the Humble/^ 

HOW does God resist ? What is it 
but pride when we try to bend 
God's will to ours ? It must 
be because it implies that we think we 
know as well as He does what is good for 



128 MEDITATIONS. 

US. Surely pride is the enemy of self- 
surrender and of obedience. It seems tc 
me if one cannot be taught humility in 
one way, one must in another ; that God 
perhaps strips the soul bare of all that 
it valued, not only of worldly things but 
of spiritual ones as well, that it may be 
truly humble, and coming to Him utterly 
cast down, humbled into the dust, may 
be ready to receive His grace. 

Perhaps it is hard for the soul to fee! 
that God's grace is worth the loss of all 
things, yet the soul that feels it hard, is 
simply the one that most needs that disci- 
pHne. 

That God's ways are past my finding 
out, I can only try to obey Him blindlyc 
not seeking to know anything but His 
will for me. 

^'Humble Yourselves Therefore Under 
the Mighty Hand of God" 

IN other words that we should allow 
God to have His own way with us; 
that we should humble the one thing 
that belongs to us, which is our will. God 
may send any kind of discipline to the 



MEDITATIONS. .I29 

soul that He sees best; He may try all 
ways, and yet the soul may resist Him, 
may refuse to take the discipline. It is 
an old experience repeated, — the story of 
the penitent and the impenitent thief 
The cross to each of them was the same, 
the nails, the thirst, the cramp, — the tor- 
ture in both. In one it was the means of 
making a saint, in the other of making a 
deeper sinner. 

Let me try to humble myself under 
God's hand, — to be willing not to under- 
stand His dealings with me. 

And God's hand is so strong ; so heavy.. 
— yet I a weak woman can join myself 
to Him, can join my will to His, and 
being one with the will of God, my will 
also is almighty. 

Not to make God's will come down to 
mine; not to try to reconcile myself to 
His will as something outside myself, 
not to try to make my will His, but to 
give my will up so entirely to Him, that 
it shall be mine no longer, but only His. 

That God is almighty, yet He will not 
take from us the power of choice; but 
He gives us the opportunity to give our 



130 MEDITATIONS. 

wills to Him that He may do with us 
v^hat He will. 

To try to offer myself to Him wholly, 
to-^^ay. 

'^Christ Yet Learned the Obedience by 
the Things Which He Suffered," 

IT has at times seemed to me that it 
might be only a certain type of per- 
son that needed to learn obedience 
through suffering; and as if a higher 
type might be able to reach the same 
end without any of that severe discipline 
which is needed by a hard and obstinate 
and wicked nature like mine. 

But how can one learn obedience with- 
out the opportunity of practising it? If I 
do not suffer, how can I know that I can 
bear suffering according to God's will ? 
I may hope that I would, but I can never 
be sure that I would in everything, and 
I might feel that one ought to be patient 
about some thmgs and not about others. 
But if God sends a cancer. He also sends 
poverty, and wrong and fatigue, and 
just now, these perhaps try me more than 
the other. 



MEDITATIONS. I3I 

It is wrong to feel as if I were under a 
curse and outside the pale of God's love, 
when He let His own Son suffer as He 
did. 

To try to-day when I feel pain, to offei 
myself to God to suffer it. 

^'Suffering According to God's Will" 

LET me try to think, first, what it is 
to suffer according to God's will. 
Can we say that God likes to have 
people suffer ? Certainly I cannot be- 
lieve that God takes pleasure in suffering, 
and I know that He could stop it if He 
would. Then what remains ? 

God permits suffering, — there is no 
doubt about that. God is almighty and 
therefore nothing is impossible to Him. 

God lets me suffer although He need 
not. Then I think the only answer is in 
the last part of the text, that is, that if 
I suffer according to His will, I must 
trust Him as one that is faithful, one who 
is to be trusted with a perfect trust. 

I have not to understand^ I have only 
to trust in Him. He does not ask me to 
know why things are, or to settle the 
problems of life ; only to trust to His love. 



132 MEDITATIONS. 

It is hard to trust in love that hurts 
one so. 

It seems so natural for love to comfort 
and to heal and to help, — but I must take 
God as He is, — not as I would have Him. 

To try to think of this when the pain 
is bad. 

^^ Think it Not Strange as Though Some 
Strange Thing Happened Unto You/' 

IT seems to me the bitterest thing about 
suffering is to feel that it is acci- 
dental; that it is some unnatural 
thing that has happened. 

If one could really feel that it is God's 
will that we should suffer, we could see 
the necessity for submission, but that 
still is very hard. 

One must go a step further than that, 
and believe that God wills it for our good, 
that He wills it because He loves us, that 
it is a trial, and also an opportunity, a 
test; that God gives us a chance to show 
what is in us of trust, and love, and obe- 
dience, of that love for God which turns 
evil into good, which makes suffering and 
disease and death the means of glorifying 
Him. Not that God loves to have us suffer. 



MEDITATIONS. 133 

but that suffering is the necessary means 
of hoHness for some people. 

Without suffering, one type of hoHness 
would be impossible and we could not 
be like Him in His suffering, if we did 
not suffer ourselves. 

''That, When His Glory Shall Be Re- 

vealed, Ye May Be Glad also With 

Exceeding Joy^ 

I SUPPOSE that one cannot know what 
it is to be really happy, if one has 
never been unhappy ; that one can 
never know what it is to be relieved 
from suffering, unless one has suffered. 
Let me try to think what would be the 
difference between two people, one of 
whom has suffered greatly with Him, and 
one who has not, when all suffering has 
passed away into His joy and His glory. 
Unless we believe that our Lord's suf- 
fering made no permanent impression 
upon Him, and we cannot of course be- 
lieve that, it must be quite different for 
Him now to think or speak of suffering 
from what it would be if He had never 
suffered. 



134 MEDITATIONS. 

If He had never suffered, He might 
have had the tenderest pity for us, but 
what He said would have seemed Hke 
mockery to us in our sufferings, coming 
as it would from One who had always 
been strong, happy, untouched by physi- 
cal pain or mental distress. 

Now we know that He understands all 
our pain because He has felt it Himself, 
and we, too, can enter into fellowship 
with His sufferings because we have suf- 
fered; and we can suffer in the same 
spirit with which He suffered, which cer- 
tainly brings us nearer to Him ; and then, 
when He gives us the happiness and joy 
He has Himself, we shall have that too 
as He has it, only in lesser degree. 

That we shall be with Him in joy, as 
much as in suffering, and that forever, 
while this is only for a little while. 

''Our Father^ 

THE best human fathers can do so lit- 
tle. 

A human father cannot keep his 
child well, cannot spare his child suffer- 
ing or sorrow or disappointment, but God 
can. There are no limitations to His 



MEDITATIONS. 135 

power. He can always give us just what 
is best for us. 

He never makes mistakes and He never 
wishes He could give us something that 
is out of His power, because nothing is 
out of His power, and no one can spoil 
His work in our souls. 

But we ourselves can throw away our 
opportunities. 

That God will give me just exactly 
what I need. 

To ask Him to-day that I may not hin- 
der His will in any way. 

The Knowledge of God Leads to Grace 
and Peace. 

WHAT must be the result of a true 
knowledge of God ? Grace 
and Peace. How does the 
knowledge of God come to the hu- 
man soul ? It comes when the soul 
has surrendered itself to God, when the 
soul is ready to learn of Him, when it 
longs to know what He is like and to 
grow like Him. How ? I think by look- 
ing at Him ; by speaking to Him ; above 
all, by loving Him. 



136 MEDITATIONS. 

I suppose people cannot really love 
Him without growing like Him, yet I am 
not a bit like Him. 

The result of knowing Him, then, must 
be to make us like Him ; certainly it must 
be to make us love Him. Grace and 
Peace as results of- knowing Him. Grace, 
I suppose, means holiness ; the power to 
be holy, — the power, or nature, or some- 
thing, that makes it possible for one to 
do things that one could not naturally do. 

Grace is something supernatural, above 
nature. 

It is above nature certainly to be glad 
of suffering. 

Who could expect a woman to be glad, 
or even willing, to have cancer, unless 
the woman had the grace of God to make 
it possible ? And Peace. The peace 
that cannot be disturbed by anything 
but sin ; the peace that God gives to His 
people. Why ? Because God could give 
nothing else, — ^because from Him who is 
so good, only good can come. 

No one can ever get an evil thought 
from God. No one ever got anything 
from Him but an unmixed good, though 
we may spoil it. God's grace can do for 



MEDITATIONS. 137 

US what would be utterly impossible for 
us by ourselves. 

To try not to be cross to-day. 



These Things Shall Open to Us His 
Kingdom. 

HIS Kingdom, which is not of this 
world, which it is impossible for 
one to enter without these things, 
whose door is penitence and humility. 

Not only that, but those who have none 
of these things do not even wish to enter 
it; not only that, but those who have 
none of these things cannot enter. 

It is impossible to go into the King- 
dom of Heaven without fitness of soul; 
without the wedding garment. The King- 
dom of suffering, whose God suffered all 
that His people suffer, whose purpose 
it is to fill up what is behind the suffer- 
ing of Christ. 

But if we have these things, that King- 
dom will be our natural home ; where we 
belong, because it is His, and we are 
His, and have become like Him through 
suffering and discipHne. 



I3S MEDITATIONS. 

''Baptised Into His Death." 

1WANT to try in this meditation to 
learn the principle of dying in Christ. 
What does it mean to be baptized 
into Christ, to be made a member of Christ, 
one of the members of His body, and 
partaker of His spirit ? surely a mem- 
ber of His body may be a part of Him 
and not be a separate body. That is, there 
can be nothing contradictory to Him in 
His own members. If one is a part of 
Christ, one must live with His life, not 
with one's own life. 

To ask Him to-day to keep me from 
v/orrying. 

''To Him That Overcometh," 

WHAT will our Lord do for those 
who overcome ? He will keep 
their names in the book of life, 
and He will not be ashamed of them. 
Overcome what ? Overcome their sins, 
overcome all evil ,overcome, lastly, them- 
selves. He overcame temptation, the 
devil, and death. He gave Himself for 
us and for God's glory, and in every 



MEDITATIONS. 1 39 

temptation and every trial He gives us 
the opportunity of being like Him. I be- 
lieve that God takes pleasure in seeing 
His children bear things well. That it 
even makes Him happier when they fight 
well and overcome. 

''An Open Door." 

WHO is it that sets the door open? 
God. We have only to go 
through that open door. 

He sets some door open before each 
one of us. It is open ; — there it is, for us 
to enter, for me it seems to be the door 
of suffering that leads to death. 

The door of vocations, and, when God 
opens the door, no one can close it. If it 
is God's will that I should die, all the 
surgeons in the world cannot keep me 
alive. 

The door of opportunity. Surely God 
has set before all of us the possibility of 
being saints. 

He has put into my hands all the ma- 
terials of saintship. The suffering, the 
need of surrender, the life of uncertainity 
with death always near, always probable ; 
the training and the discipline. 



140 - MEDITATIONS. 

He has opened the door, and no man 
can close it. God has surely opened the 
door to me and no one can close it, nor 
any circumstances prevent my entering it. 



''Behold, I Come Quickly.'' 

QUICKLY, in any case, to all of us. 
Perhaps more quickly to me. 
How does He come ? He comes 
to us in the Sacrament. He comes to 
us in meditation. He comes to us in pain 
and in sorrow and in joy. Perhaps He 
comes to us in death. Surely there is one 
thing that He has always said of His 
coming, and that is, that it should be un- 
expected. He must often find in our 
souls such coldness and indifference, — 
such reluctance to meet Him. 

We think He can wait, — we want to 
finish something here, or we care a great 
deal for people and we do not want to 
leave them; or we have business to at- 
tend to, or we think there are people 
who cannot do without us. 

But if we really loved God, we should 
not be willing to let anything keep us 



MEDITATIONS. I4I 

from Him, much less to put off the mo- 
ment of His coming. 

To offer myself often to-day. 

''And I Will Write Upon Him My New 
Name." 

HE will write on those glorious and 
happy souls His new name. They 
shall be all His. And to whom 
does He make that promise ? Who are 
His own? 

They are those of whom He is proud ; 
who have fought bravely, who have over- 
come sin, death and suffering, and in His 
strength. Yet although He fought with 
them, they fought too. Perhaps it is 
impossible to say that just so much is 
theirs and so much His, because they are 
one with Him. 

I think that although there may be 
fortitude, courage, patience, resignation 
without conscious knowledge of Him, 
that these independent virtues are differ- 
ent from the holiness which comes of 
self-surrender and of love, and that only 
by that conscious self-surrender to Him 
can one be made happy in the midst of 
suffering. 



142 MEDITATIONS. 

The suffering may be borne in one case 
as well and as bravely, but in the other 
the suffering may be turned into joy. 

That is what He gives. His grace can 
turn suffering into joy. 

To offer all my disappointment to Him 
this afternoon. 

A good deal of pain. 



7n My Father's House Are Many Man- 
sions,'' 



HE was saying these things for them 
to remember after He was gone. 
He was thinking of them before 
His Passion. Perhaps, if I can dare to 
say so without irreverence, it was a com- 
fort to Him, even to Him, to look be- 
yond the present sufferings to the peace 
and happiness of Heaven. 

Their thoughts. They had thought of 
Him as a King in this world. They were 
still without the Holy Ghost, and no 
doubt afterwards when they had been 
w^orking and suffering for Him for years, 
they understood; but I do not believe 
they did then. 



MEDITATIONS. 143 

The earthly nature cannot care for 
spiritual things. 

Corruption cannot inherit the King- 
dom of Heaven. 

Surely that is the way to bear present 
suffering, to look beyond it. What is one 
year of struggling, or, two, or three, if, 
afterwards we get there ? 

A three years' course of pain; a three 
years' time of study in His School. 

As He looked beyond His Passion to 
the time when it should be over, so we 
should look. 

To ask him often to-day to help me. 

^7 Go to Prepare a Place for You/' 

LET me think of our Lord getting 
ready our places for us. What He 
would be likely to provide. Of 
finally finding it. What sort of a place is 
He preparing for me ? 

I think that it will be a surprise and 
that He wants it to be so. 

Perhaps it is one of our Lord's great- 
est pleasures to plan these things for us, 
and then to see our pleasure in them. 

He knows just what I Hke and He 
knows just what I have most missed 



144 MEDITATIONS. 

here : what I have wished for most, what 
I needed most, and He has no Hmits to 
His power. 

He can never say "I should have Hked 
to have given you something but I could 
not get it," or ''I wish I could have got 
you so and so." 

And all our places will be different, be- 
cause we are all different, and He knows 
us as no one else does, not even we our- 
selves. 

Of finding the place He has made for 
me, — mine because He gives it to me, 
specially mine, because it was made for 
me alone out of all the millions of His 
people. 

He will give me what will make me 
peifectly happy even here. He will give 
me even Himself. 

"I Will Sup With Them, and They With 
Me:' 

I THINK that may, — yes does, — mean 
that He will share what he has who 
opens the door and also that he who 
opens the door will share what is His, 
because He says "and he with Me." 
Let me consider our Lord's sharing in 



MEDITATIONS. 145 

my things. What does He share with 
me ? That which is mine. And what is 
mine ? He can never take off from me 
the burden of doubt about the cancer 
coming back, but He can help me to bear 
it. 

He can share the knowledge and un- 
derstand the apprehension. 

He shares what He has with the soul, 
the soul that is to sup with Him, espec- 
ially He shares His peace. — peace in the 
midst of suffering and of anxiety and 
trial and death. I know He can give me 
that. 

I believe, too, that He will share in my 
suffering, and that I can share in His 
peace, but that in order to do this, there 
must be love on my side as well as on 
His, and surrender as well as love. 

To ask Him often to-day to help me. 

'7 Will Come In to Him, and Will Sup 
With Him and He With Me/' 

HE would have us with Him. He said 
that He would receive us unto 
Himself. Let me try to think how 
He must feel when He sees us prefer 
others to Himself. 



146 MEDITATIONS. 

There is no sense of neglect of lone- 
liness that He has not felt. He sees, 
every day, those whom He died to save, 
forgetting Him; preferring others to 
Him ; leaving Him for them. 

Why does He want us with Him ? Be- 
cause He loves us. Love is so different 
from philanthropy. 

A philanthropist may do all he can to 
benefit people and yet have no love for 
them at all, and never feel any wish to 
be with them, may even feel distaste for 
them. 

Philanthropy may have a great deal of 
selfishness about it. But God's love is 
utterly different from that. 

Jesus should be before anyone else 
with me, because He loves me. 

To pray often to Him to-day. 

To try to keep my mind fixed on Him. 

*'Our Father in HeavenJ' 

LET me try to think who said that ? It 
was our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
told us to pray in that way. 
He wanted us to feel certain that God 
was our Father. 



MEDITATIONS. I47 

He said so a great many times, and if 
He wanted us to feel so, that is the way 
for us to feel, and if God is His Father, 
He is ours also. He said ''My Father 
and your Father." 

That God really is my Father, and if 
almighty God is my Fahter, nothing 
ought to worry me. 

''He Shall Be Delivered Unto the Gen- 
tiles:' ■ 

LET me consider our Lord's exact 
knowledge of what was before 
Him, His feelings in regard to it. 
His actions under His sufferings, how 
we should apply it to ourselves. 

His knowledge. There was not one 
detail of all that He has to suffer hidden 
from Him. In His case He was afraid 
of nothing. He had always known all 
that was to come, and He knew much 
more than we can ever imagine. 

He really bore His Passion in anticipa- 
tion all His life. 

I think that is one answer to the claim 
that His suffering was short. 

He had always the anticipation of His 



148 MEDITATIONS. 

Passion, therefore it seems to me if we 
are to be like Him, we should not seek 
to go blindfolded or unconsciously to our 
passion. 

How did He feel about it ? He felt it 
infinitely more than we can feel anything, 
as His organization was infinitely higher 
than ours. Yet with all that sensitive an- 
ticipation. He never drew back. He, of 
His own will, 'Vent up to Jerusalem.'' 
He offered Himself. I ought to offer 
myself to suffer if it is God's will. 

To offer myself this afternoon in the 
train. 



^And They Shall Scourge Him, and Put 
Him to Death/' 



L 



ET me think of our Lord going up to 
His death. That our Lord should 
be put to death ! Let me try to 
think of the fact that although He went 
willingly and voluntarily to His death. 
He still did not do anything like dying by 
His own hand. Our Lord's death was 
in no sense suicide. 

He had perfect willingness to suffer, 
but He had not self-inflicted suffering. 



MEDITATIONS. I49 

The scourging and mocking and spit- 
ting and crucifying, those were all done 
by others. 

They nailed Him to the cross. He sur- 
rendered Himself to them to do with 
Him as they pleased. 

^^And Whither I Go Ye Know; and the 
Way Ye Know/' 

THIS was the result of His three 
years' teaching, that He still had 
to try to lift their hopes heaven- 
ward. But I think of it as said to me. 
Where did He go ? He went to Heaven. 
And what is the way to Heaven ? To 
follow Him. To take up one's cross and 
follow Him every day unto the end. 
Then where He is, I may be also. 

What is the cross He asks me to take 
up ? Poverty, suffering, discourage- 
ment, loneliness, anxiety. 

How am I ever to bear this cross ? I 
cannot unless He does it for me ? The 
way of the cross is the way to Heaven. 
It was His way. It must be ours also. 

To ask His help to-day whenever I 
need it. 



150 MEDITATIONS. 

''They All Forsook Him and Fled/' 

LET me think when they forsook Him, 
who they were who forsook Him, 
why they forsook Him. 

They left Him as soon as there was 
any danger; at a time when He really 
needed them, and when it would have 
been a comfort to Him to have them 
near. They had the most glorious oppor- 
tunity offered them that any one ever 
had, and they lost it. 

Who were they who forsook Him? 
They were His own people ; His friends 
who had been with Him day and night 
for years, who really did love Him ; who 
had left all to follow Him, and He re- 
membered that and had patience with 
them. 

This shows that people may care a 
great deal for one and yet fail to give 
what one needs most from them. 

Why did they forsake Him ? Because 
they cared more for themselves than they 
did for Him, — it was selfish cowardice 
that made them do it. They loved Him, 
but they did not love Him enough to for- 
get themselves for His sake. 



MEDITATIONS. I5I 

They forsook Him because they cared 
more for themselves than for Him. 
To pray often for grace to-day. 

''This is My Blood Which is Shed for 
You and for Many," 

LET me try to meditate first on His 
Blood which was shed for many. 
On the reason why it was shed. He 
called the wine His blood and He was 
speaking to people who were in the habit 
of hearing of sacrifices, and seeing the 
blood of the victims poured out. 

Sacrifice was the main part of the Jew- 
ish religion. 

Surely He must have loved us to give 
us His Blood. He had nothing else but 
His life, — yes He had, He had His power 
of working miracles. 

He had given to people all His life, 
poor as He was, — what was more to 
them than any money. He was now to 
shed His Blood to save people from their 
sin, to heal the disease of sin, as He had 
healed their bodily diseases. Nothing 
else could cure sin but His Blood. No 
one else can cure it now. 



152 MEDITATIONS. 

Only the Blood of Jesus can cure me 
of sin. 

To try not to think bitterly of anyone 
to-day. 

''The Agony in the Garden,'^' 

LET me try first to see how it was, 
thinking of it as something that 
really happened. He suffered as no 
one else ever suffered before or since, and 
His friends slept. How absolutely they 
failed Him at every point in His Pas- 
sion, yet they, too, were among those 
whom He was dying to save. 

His love could not keep Him from see- 
ing what a poor lot we all are, all of us. 

It must have seemed to Him some- 
times as if we were not worth it. 

That was the cup that He drank 
from ? He had to feel it, or He could not 
have known how we feel it. He had to 
meet it and to overcome it for us. Death, 
the great enemy of the human race, had to 
do his worst with Him. He died for us 
so that we do not have to die wholly any 
more. He endured all that sin and death 
could do to us, that He might save us 
from them. 



MEDITAtlONS. 153 

To try not to think bitterly of anyone 
to-day. 

''The Hour is at Hand,'' 

HE came back to them the last time. 
He had gone through the struggle 
without them. 

Their opportunity to watch with Him 
in His conflict was gone forever. 

They might have helped Him, and they 
would not, — perhaps they could not. 

They must have wished afterwards 
that they had done differently. 

The same thing often happens to us. 
It happened to me to be greatly alone 
at the time of my greatest need ; to have 
to learn that awful thing all alone as far 
as people are concerned. 

Yet we can never be left alone as He 
was left, because we always have Him to 
go to. 

Yet He, too, sometimes seems to leave 
us. 

However no matter how much we are 
deserted, betrayed, denied by people of 
whom we expected other things, He 
knows just how it is. 



154 MEDITATIONS. 

'7 Come to Do Thy Will, God/' 

HOW did He do it ? He did it per- 
fectly. 
He never chose of two ways the 
one by which He could serve God least. 

He never preferred His own will or 
pleasure or convenience to God's will. 
He sought to know His Father's will, 
and when it was known, to do it ; to know 
as much of that will and to do as much 
as He could. 

We are so often afraid really to know 
God's will, because we do not think we 
should like to do it, or should be able 
to. He never avoided it. He never re- 
fused it. He always found out what it 
was and did it. He always did it in ab- 
solute perfection. That, we cannot pos- 
sibly do, but we can will to do it as well 
as we can. 

To strive to please God, to do His will, 
is all we have to do in this world; we 
have nothing else to do. 



MEDITATIONS. I55 

''One of the Officers Struck Jesus, Say- 
ing 'Answerest Thou the High 
Priest So/ " 

ALL we who have been poor know to 
what rudeness and insult poverty 
exposes one; how money and po- 
sition fence people about from what is 
disagreeable. 

No one who has always had plenty of 
money can know what it is to be obliged 
to endure the unkindness and rudeness 
of selfish, unchristian people. 

But Christ was led as a lamb to 
the slaughter. He was beaten, spit 
upon, struck, I dare say kicked, as 
poor forlorn dogs often are by brutal 
boys. One, unarmed, defenceless man 
among the Roman soldiers. He was re- 
buked for disrespect to the high-priest, 
as if what He said was the impertinence 
of an inferior to those above Him. 
Think of saying that to the Son of God. 

That there is nothing of rudeness and 
insult that He has not experienced. 

To try not to think of any personal 
trouble this morning. 



156 MEDITATIONS. 

'^And He Bearing His Cross, Went 
Forth/' 

LET me try to think of Him carrying 
road, in the hot glaring sunshine, 
His heavy cross along the dusty 
the cross on which He was to be raised ; 
the cross that afterwards was to carry 
Him, — just as I may have to carry the 
cross of this disease for a time, until 
perhaps I am nailed to it, and, no longer 
able to walk under it, am nailed upon it, 
— nailed to it by pain, weakness and 
death. 

He was in a state when He was not fit 
to carry anything ; so it is that the heav- 
iest burdens are laid on the weakest and 
most suflfering; and excessive suflfering 
of one kind is no reason why one should 
not have a great deal of another kind laid 
on one too. 

His weakness. His wounds did not 
keep Him from having to carry His cross. 

Surely He must feel for all poor over- 
worked people, and even for abused 
horses, when He Himself was compelled 
to stagger along under a weight He 
could not carry. 



MEDITATIONS. 157 

How is it possible He should not feel 
for them ? 

That one form of suflfering is no pro- 
tection against another, and Christ can 
feel for all over burdened beings. 

To try to offer myself to Him in the 
services to-day. 



'^And Laid Him in a Sepulchre/' 

HIS body was there, but His Spirit 
was not. That was far away, 
gone to carry on His work. So I 
suppose it will be with us when we die, 
— our bodies will be cold and dead, but 
we ourselves will be elsewhere, some- 
where, going on with our work, or per- 
haps resting. That poor body that suf- 
fered so much, will not suffer any more, 
ever again. This Easter Eve Day 
ought to be a day of rest above all things. 
His body was, apparently, perfectly dead. 
It was dead because the spirit had left it. 
He was really dead that day, and our 
death is to be the same as His. 



158 MEDITATIONS. 

''Be Not Faithless, But Believing," 

OUR Lord did not refuse to explain 
things to Thomas and so to con- 
form to his weakness. But 
Thomas had lost what He could never re- 
gain. That was gone, no matter what hap- 
pened afterwards, no matter what long 
years of labor were to be crowned with 
martyrdom at the end, nothing could 
ever bring back that lost opportunity; 
that had gone forever. He had disap- 
pointed His Lord and he could never get 
over that. 

I wonder if in Heaven the doubters 
will ever have as high a place as the peni- 
tents who believe. 

Sinner as Mary Magdalene was, she 
did not fail, — now how does this apply 
to me ? 

It does very plainly. / have a great 
opportunity for faith, for trust. 

I ought not to DC afraid at all. I ought 
to please Him by absolute faith in Him. 

Whatever happens I have an opportu- 
nity of pleasing God. 

To ask Him often for faith to-day. 



MEDITATIONS. 1 59 

''Lovest Thou Me/' 

OUR Lord certainly did care about 
Peter a great deal. Why ? How 
was it that He could care for one 
who had denied Him, who had behaved 
as Peter had ? He must have seen some- 
thing in him besides his sins. One 
would have thought that He would have 
thrown Peter aside and taken up some 
one else after that denial, three times re- 
peated and, then, He asked of him, not 
whether he repented, but if he loved Him ; 
so it would seem that God cared more 
for love than for anything else. 

Probably St. Peter's contrition and 
penitence were so bitter that he needed 
no further punishment. He was a peni- 
tent sinner like Mary Magdalene and 
there was no reason why our Lord 
should not treat him as He treated her. 

Peter's sin was against our Lord per- 
sonally, but that would not make it any 
harder for Him to forgive. 

He will always forgive a penitent sin- 
ner who loves Him. 

To ask often for faith to-day. 
Easter Day. 

Too ill to make a meditation. 



l6o MEDITATIONS. 

''He Appeared First to Mary Magda- 
lene/' 

HE appeared to her first, before He 
came to any of His disciples. Why 
did He appear to her first ? In 
the first place, she was there at His 
grave. Probably the lesson for me in this 
meditation is, that we must go out of 
ourselves; that things do not come to 
those who slothfuUy shut themselves up 
by themselves. 

It does not seem possible that Mary 
Magdalene cared more for Him than His 
mother did, yet she took more pains to 
be near Him even in His Sepulchre. It 
does show, I believe, that sinners have 
the first place in His heart, that penitent 
sinners, those like her, who have been 
steeped in sin, out of whom He has cast 
many devils, — those He cares for more 
than for the immaculate souls that have 
always followed Him. 

There is no need for any one to say 
it for Him. He has said so Himself, a 
dozen times. 

But, then. He expects sinners to put 
away their sins; He wants penitents, 



MEDITATIONS. l6l 

real penitents and a penitent may rise to 
as great a height as any one else, though 
not perhaps the same height. 

Surely, they must love Him more. 

To try this morning not to think of 
anything that can be displeasing to Him, 
and to ofifer to Him the disappointment 
I feel about the special work I had hoped 
to do. 



''The Dead Shall be Raised Incorrup- 
tible/' 

INCORRUPTIBLE in body and in 
mind. There shall be no more death. 
Then we shall know that we can 
never have any more disease, any more 
pain. 

Not only shall there not be anything 
of that, but it shall be impossible. We 
shall have bodies that are incorruptible, 
and minds that cannot fail and souls that 
cannot sin as we must see when we are 
told that there shall be no more pain. 

It is impossible to imagine any kind of 
sin that docs not create pain somehow or 
other. 



l62 MEDITATIONS. 

No More Death. 

" r^ EATH Hath no more dominion 

L^ over Him/' or over us. For if 
we die in Him there is no more 
death, nothing but everlasting Hfe before 
us. 

What difference does it make when we 
die ? We only die a little sooner or a little 
later, but it comes to the same thing in 
the end. 

What difference do a few years more 
or less make ? They do not matter at 
all, but it makes every difference that we 
should live so that we may be saved from 
spoiling all Eternity for a little self-in- 
dulgence or disobedience now. 

I have got to go down into the Valley 
of the Shadow of Death. Yes, but I shall 
come out on the other side, and there 
is Jesus Christ and Heaven, and everlast- 
ing life. 

To say often to-day, "I will fear no 
evil." 



MEDITATIONS. 163 

''These Are They Which Came Out of 
Great Tribulation/' 

WHO are they, from what did they 
come, how did they come ? In 
white robes and with palms in 
their hands. In glory, glory that comes 
of suffering, but not of mere suffering, 
but of suffering rightly borne, borne for 
the right, offered to God, borne willingly. 

From what ? From suffering. Suf- 
fering did not keep them from sin, suf- 
fering did not purify them, suffering did 
not make them martyrs. Not for mere 
suffering were they crowned and with 
palms in their hands. 

Sin, if repented of, cannot keep one 
from being a saint, neither can any suf- 
fering however great take away one's 
sins. 

Suffering is the raw material, useless 
in itself, but capable of being made God's 
best gift to us, and of bringing the most 
glorious result if we will receive it as 
His gift. 

God has given to me what may be the 
greatest suffering; it must be a good 
deal of pain mentally at any rate. 



164 MEDITATIONS. 

To ask Him in the train to give me 
strength to use suffering as He wills. 

''The End of Those Things is Death/' 

WHAT is death, how is death the 
end of sin, how can we choose 
death rather than life ? Death 
is corruption and decay. Death is isola- 
tion, loneHness, a dead body is cut off from 
all communication with the living, it is 
hopeless. So it is with spiritual death, — 
it is mental and moral decay and corrup- 
tion, because it is separation from God 
who is the source of all life. 

Life keeps the body from decay. 

God is the life that keeps the soul 
from decay, and sin separates the soul 
from God, as death separates the life 
from the body. 

I must do God's will whether in life 
or in death. If God calls me to die, I 
know that it is only to go to Him the 
sooner. 

If He calls me to take up life, and go 
on with it, it must be because He has 
something more for me to do. In either 
case no harm can come to me except sin. 



MEDITATIONS. 165 

There is no such thing as death to any- 
one who is in Christ, and nothing but sin 
can separate me from Christ. 

To make an act of surrender this after- 
noon, for either life or death. 



^'Then They Also Who Have Fallen 
Asleep in Him Are Perished,'' 

WHO are the '^dead in Him?" All 
the saints, all who believed in 
Him, trusted Him, loved Him, 
took Him for their Lord, died for Him. 
All,— the Martyrs, Apostles,— St. Paul 
himself. 

If He is dead, they are dead also ; for if 
the Master could not rise from the dead, 
certainly the servant could not, because 
it meant much more than common death 
for Him to die. 

It would mean the end of all things, 
of all His life. We should all die with 
Him. Our life is so dependent on His, 
that we can have no hope at all, separ- 
ated from Him. 



l66 MEDITATIONS. 

''If Christ he Not Raised, Your Faith is 
Vain, Ye Are Yet in Your Sin.'* 

OUR faith is vain, — yes, if Christ is 
not risen we are deceived. We 
have nothing in which to trust, 
there is then no hope for us at all. We 
have no hope but in Him ; outside of Him 
nothing can help us. 

Let me try to think what there is to be- 
lieve in without Him. There might have 
been before He came, a dim glimmer of 
knowledge of God, — of hope in Him, — 
but not now. Why ? Because if He 
was mistaken, He was not God; because 
God could not be mistaken and if He 
were only man, then we must fall back on 
the old, faint, uncertain hope, knowing 
that He at least was utterly mistaken, if 
not worse. 

Then we should be still in our sins. 
Yes, because if He is not risen, as He 
said. He is not God, and if He is not 
God, there has been no Incarnation and 
no Sacrifice for our sins, — nothing to take 
them away. 

Then His Passion is nothing more 
than any other suffering and death, — yet 



MEDITATIONS. 167 

we cling to the idea of His death, and are 
not wilHng to give that up, even when 
our faith in His resurrection is so weak. 
But we cannot have the Passion with- 
out the Resurrection ; we cannot get any 
good from our Lord's Passion without 
His Resurrection. To pray to Him with- 
out beHeving in it, would be to pray to 
one who was dead, who could do noth- 
ing for us at all. 



That He May Exalt You in Due Time. 



yj* 



THAT is, in His time, not in our time. 
Patience, humiHty, obedience, — 
those three virtues perhaps not in- 
separable, but so necessary to each other's 
perfection. 

How many virtues go to make up only 
a very small degree of holiness. It takes 
so much to produce a little. In God's 
time, not in mine. God will not hurry. 

I must wait and wait without knowing 
when His time will come. It does seem 
as if God expected a great deal of peo- 
ple. He wants us to be like Him, and 
think of His patience. 

Still God does expect a great deal. 



1 68 MEDITATIONS. 

That He may exalt us. Perhaps that 
explains why God asks so much of us. 

How could He exalt us if we were not 
fit to be exalted ? 

That we should be willing to let God's 
will take its course with us through the 
actions of others, and in the painful cir- 
cumstances of our lives. 

''To-day Shalt Thou Be With Me" 

LET me think to whom Our Lord said 
this, and the circumstances under 
which He said it. 

He said it to a penitent. I think I 
have been inclined to forget the neces- 
sity of penitence before He could call 
anyone to Himself, — that mere suffering 
in itself cannot bring us to Him without 
the grace of penitence, that suffering and 
sin may go together and very often do. 

Suffering with God is hard to bear, but 
think of suffering without God. 

I suppose our Lord Himself bore the 
suffering without help, but He gave the 
penitent thief the comfort He would not 
take for Himself. 

The penitent thief had to bear his suf- 



MEDITATIONS. I69 

fering all the same, but he bore it with 
hope. 

That is the difference, — Hope, Think 
of dying of cancer without hope, or even 
without a personal, definite hope of be- 
ing with Him at the end. 

Let me try to think how He felt when 
He said those words. He was In 
extreme bodily pain, not only that, but 
the worst suffering one can imagine, 
and it was just that awful suffering that 
brings Him so near to us. 

He might have looked down from 
Heaven on all the suffering in the world 
and pitied it, and what would that have 
been to us? To be sure it wouldhavebeen 
better to have had a God who pitied us 
than One who did not, but it would not 
have satisfied us, and I do not believe it 
would have satisfied Him either. It 
could not have satisfied Him. 

He wanted to be one with us, so that He 
could really know how to feel not only 
for us, but with us. 

To offer myself to Him this afternoon, 
and to make an act of thanksgiving for 
the pain He has let me feel. 



I/O MEDITATIONS. 

'Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me." 

IT is possible that there is always some 
further trial, because God will not 
let us off without taking us on from 
one height to another: — the suffering of 
any one thing is not to enable us to get 
through with trouble, but only to prepare 
us to go on with something else, higher 
and harder'perhaps. 

Our Lord had suffered everything and 
failed in nothing. 

One would have said that there was 
nothing left for Him to suffer; but God 
thought differently. 

God saw that there was another sur- 
render to be made by Him, another sub- 
mission, something more to be borne. 

There was nothing to be left of dread, 
of discouragement, of what would have 
been despair to anyone else; there was 
nothing spared to Him, and if we really 
wish to follow Him, we will not wish 
to have anything spared to us; espec- 
ially anything that He had, as far as we 
are able to bear it. 

To try to pray at least once every hour 
to-day. 
''He Took the Cup, He Took Bread, and 



MEDITATIONS. I7I 

^'Gave T hanks f' 

LET me try to think how it was with 
Him when He gave thanks, how 
He would have done it, how that 
affects me. 

He was about to be crucified. He was 
to be betrayed and left alone and for- 
saken by all His people. 

He, it would seem, had then nothing 
for which to give thanks. Yet in the 
rnidst of all that anxiety, suffering an- 
ticipation of the Passion, He gave thanks 
for those small things, the bread and the 
wine. 

It does seem to me that I ought to re- 
member this, when I think of my own 
state of illness, suffering and probable 
death; to be thankful for what comes 
of comfort and blessing, even in small 
things. 

How could He do it ? Of course He 
could do anything, and He thought of 
God first always. 

He wanted first of all to please God, 
and there was no bitterness in His soul. 

In all His suffering, through His life, 
and in the Passion, there was never any- 
thing but love to God. 



172 MEDITATIONS. 

It shows me that what I need is trust 
in God, love for God. 

That we can always find some cause 
for thankfulness, and that no doubt I 
shall have a great many helps if I need 
them. 

^'Father, Forgive Them.'' 

EVEN at that moment He thought of 
others. It would have seemed 
enough if He had thought only of 
Himself; if He had been perfectly un- 
complaining; if He had wholly surren- 
dered Himself to God. But we do not 
know that He said anything about Him- 
self at all. 

I thought it was a great thing for me 
when I was suflfering a great deal to be 
considerate of the nurses, but He was 
considerate of His murderers. 

I think it must be that they were for- 
given. One cannot believe that He did 
such a thing as to pray for effect, or for 
example only. He really prayed, and 
for them, I think we pray sometimes in 
very diflferent circumstances for people, 
because we think we ought to do itj not 



MEDITATIONS. I73 

SO much because they need it, and we love 
them. 

That He thought of them in His deep- 
est distress, not of Himself. 

^'Father, Into Thy Hands I Commend 
My Spirit," 

NOW at last all was over, — the pain 
of body, the agony of mind. Yet 
still death had to be met. He had 
to go through the straight and dreadful 
gate of death, and although He knew 
what was on the other side and had not 
to do it in the ignorance that we are in, 
still He had never died. His human na- 
ture had all the natural shrinking that we 
feel. 

How did He meet death ? He, in 
dying, taught us how to die. If He ex- 
pects us to imitate His life. He expects 
us to imitate His death. He showed us 
the way; He did not tell us how, but 
He showed us how to follow in His steps, 
and the way that He showed us how to 
die was just the way He had always 
taken from the beginning of His life, — 
the way of self-surrender. 



174 MEDITATIONS. 

That had been the habit of His Hfe, 
the ruHng passion of it, and in death 
it ruled Him still. 

He had lived to do God's will and now 
He died to do it, and so it will be with 
us if we surrender ourselves to Him now. 

To try and make a complete act of sur- 
render this afternoon, especially with this 
intention. 

''It is Finished.'' 

LET me think of Our Lord saying 
those words upon the cross. The 
pain was nearly over then, perhaps 
it was already lessening a little, because 
He was dying. His heart was beating 
more and more feebly. He was dying. 
He had to go down that path we all must 
tread. To be sure. He knew the other 
side. He was not like us, who have 
never known it. Yet He felt it in His 
own way. We know that other people 
have taken this step; — have come 
through, and that we shall come through, 
and still there is the horror of dying, — 
that, we cannot escape. 

He had to die in order to help us to 
die. 



MEDITATIONS. 175 

To try to make an act of surrender 
often to-day. 

'^And Shall Inherit Everlasting Life/' 

WHO shall inherit ? Those who 
have given up all to follow Him. 
I have been willing to give up all 
to follow Him if I could, and He must 
look at the will one has. 

Lifey — where there is time for every- 
thing, because we are His heirs, and 
when He died He left that to us. 

He bought it for us by His life and 
death, — everlasting life with Him in per- 
fect happiness, free from all pain and 
weakness and sorrow and worry and 
trouble. No more struggle, no more ef- 
fort. 

He will give eternal life to those who 
belong to Him, — who surrender all to 
Him here. 

In the Hospital."^ 

For the day of the operation. 

To try and make it a day of retreat. 

1. To make a spiritual communion as 
well as I can in the morning. 

2. An hour's meditation. 



176 MEDITATIONS. 

3. To try to go over my life, — espec- 
ially the last years since my conversion. 

4. To offer myself absolutely. 

5. To make a confession and act of 
contrition. 

For my meditation to take the words 
"I thirst." 

To try not to complain. 

To try not to make the nurses unneces- 
sary trouble. 

To make a meditation every day while 
in the Hospital, — short if I am not able 
to do more, but of an hour when I can, in 
the morning, — half an hour in the even- 
ing. 

To try to keep my rule about talking 
of people. 

To try not to think hardly of anyone. 

To make a spiritual communion every 
morning. 



For the first operation. The second came 
when she was too weak to write, and was soon 
followed by her death. 



MEDITATIONS. 177 

''I Thirst/' 

LET me try now to think of our Lord's 
suffering on the cross from the 
need of a little water. 

One ought to be glad to have felt some- 
thing of His suffering. 

But His suffering was so much worse 
than mine. He had no pounded ice. He 
had no one to do anything for Him. He 
need not have spoken to those cruel peo- 
ple standing about His cross, but if He 
had not, we should never have known 
that He suffered just as we do. 

He only spoke twice of His own suf- 
fering, — in the last word and now in this. 
One was spiritual, the other physical suf- 
fering, but by saying what He did. He 
showed us that He felt everything. 

When He said '^I thirst," He made me 
sure that He suffered just as I have. 
One must be glad to suffer because He 
suffered. For the small amount of my 
suffering has certainly made me under- 
stand His Passion better than I did. 

Suffering gives us an opportunity to 
be like Him. 



178 MEDITATIONS. 



/rod gai?e me to-day the comfort of 
^ feeling that Be really spofce to 
me, wbicb T bave not bad for more 
tban a yean 

I tboudbt T understood fi\m to say 
' tbat T sbould do sometblng for 
l)lm before T die« 

l^et me try, tben, to wait witb 
^ patience for tbe end to come» 



MEDITATIONS. 1 79 

ON MEDITATION. 
(Prepared by the Rev. Fr. Huntington.) 

THE one point as to which Christians 
of every name agree is that they 
ought to follow the example set 
for them by their Master; that they 
ought to become Christlike. 

Whatever else a man may conceive to 
be his duty, if he profess and call himself 
a Christian, he is bound to strive to act 
and speak and think like Jesus Christ. 

But this is not so simple a matter as 
some have supposed. For it calls not 
for a mere copying of one or another 
feature of the life of Christ in this world, 
but a real grasp of His inner spirit, an 
acquiring of His point of view, a gaining 
of what St. Paul speaks of as the "mind 
of Christ." 

If this is to be done, it would seem 
necessary for the soul to put itself to 
school to Jesus Christ; to listen to His 
voice, to enter into communion with 
Him, to cultivate an actual frijendship 
with Him. 

This is what is sought in meditation. 

Without some form of meditation it 



l8o MEDITATIONS. 

does not seem likely that a soul will 
come to a clear and intimate knowledge 
of Jesus or of how to grow like Him. 

But meditation is for many persons a 
lost art. It has been thought, therefore, 
that it might be well to give a few sim- 
ple directions as to how to meditate ; es- 
pecially to outline the method of medi- 
tation largely followed by the soul whose 
meditations compose this volume. 

Only let it be said, by way of caution, 
that no one can be expected to prac- 
tice meditation who does not want to 
grow like Christ by knowing His will 
and carrying that will out in daily life. 
Anyone who is living wilfully in grave sin 
would find meditation distasteful if not 
impossible. 

And also, it is well to remember that 
no one is fitted to judge as to the value of 
this method of meditation who has not 
tried it for a considerable time, say every 
day for a month, with careful observance 
of the details. 



MEDITATIONS. l8l 

An Illustration, 

LET us begin with an illustration. 
Some years ago you were led to 
enter into correspondence with 
some man (or woman) much older than 
yourself, of wide learning and with a 
warm and generous heart. The corres- 
pondence led on to friendship and though 
you had never met your correspondent you 
felt that you knew him well. More than 
that, you felt that he knew you; knew 
you better than you know yourself, un- 
derstood your character, read your 
thoughts. His letters were the evidence 
of his knowledge, for, though they con- 
tained many sorts of information, you 
realized as you read them that every- 
thing was written with reference to your 
own needs, and was meant to bear fruit 
in your own personal character. At last 
a letter arrives which tells you that your 
friend is coming to spend the summer in 
the very place where you are to be, only 
a few doors from you. Your friend ex- 
plains that he will be occupied most of 
the time with the large interests that en- 
gage his thought, but that he is going to 



1 82 MEDITATIONS. 

arrange that you may come and visit him 
at a certain hour every morning, for fif- 
teen or twenty minutes. You feel that 
this is for you a rare opportunity, and 
you determine to make the most of it. 
You begin at once to think how you may 
employ these brief but daily visits most 
fruitfully. It seems to you that here is 
the chance to gather a fuller blessing 
from your friend's letters. Greatly as 
those letters have helped you, you have 
always felt that there was much in them 
that you were too dull to see. Now you 
can have them explained to you at first 
hand. You determine, therefore, to 
choose one or another passage — not nec- 
essarily the most difficult, perhaps the 
very simplest — and to ask your friend to 
tell you just what he intended you to 
understand by it ; what he hoped it would 
do for you in your daily life. You 
glance through the letters and mark a 
dozen or so of these passages. Then you 
find it helpful to read over the passage at 
night and recall it, with something of 
eager anticipation, in the morning. 

When you reach your friend's room, 
you begin by greeting him with respect 



MEDITATIONS. 183 

and love; you feel a sense of shame at 
anything, since the visit of the day be- 
fore, that you have thought or said or 
done that has made you unworthy of his 
friendship, you determine to obey any ad- 
vice he gives you, you long to have more 
of his spirit. Then you read the passage 
over to him and ask him to speak to you 
about it. Sometimes he puts your request 
quietly aside and speaks to you of some- 
thing different. But most often he goes 
on to open to you the significance of the 
familiar sentences. In your eagerness 
not to lose any of his words you have 
with you a blank-book and write down 
much that he says to you. Yet this does 
not deter you from repeatedly turning 
to him with some response of gratitude, 
— with an expression, now of regret as 
he points out to you your faults and 
shows you your selfishness and weakness, 
now of love, as he speaks a few tender 
words of sympathy with your sorrows, 
now of hope and determination, as he 
calls up before you the vision of a nobler 
and better self. 



184 MEDITATIONS. 

The Method. 

THOSE who have read thus far will 
have interpreted the parable for 
themselves. They will not need to 
be told that we are to come to our Lord as 
to our Friend, our oldest and best; that 
His letters are the Scriptures, written 
for each single soul ; that meditation is a 
daily visit to Him. 

All we have to do now is to make the 
method plain by clear and intelligible 
rules. 

1. In following this method only two 
books are needed, a Bible and a blank- 
book. The blank-book should be of 
such a size that, without hurrying 
one can fill out a page in a quarter of an 
hour. Other books may be of great ser- 
vice for spiritual reading but there is an 
advantage in hearing only one voice 
speaking in our hearts, and that, the voice 
of the Holy Scriptures. 

2. Choose some passage of Scripture 
on which to meditate. The miracles of 
our Lord usually furnish the simplest 
subjects for one who is beginning to medi- 
tate. Then write a few words, enough 



MEDITATIONS. 1 85 

to serve for one meditation (a portion 
of a verse is often sufficient) at the top 
of each page in the blank-book. 
Thus to give an example ; 

St. Mark 7 : 32-34. 

1. ** And they bring unto Him one that was 
deaf," 

2. ** And had an impediment in his speech ;'' 

3. *' And they beseech Him to put His hand 
upon him " 

4. '* And He took him aside from the multi- 
tude," 

5. " And put His fingers into His ears," 

6. ' ' And He spit, and touched his tongue " ; 

7. *' And looking up to heaven " 
8 ''He sighed" 

9. ** And saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, 
Be opened." 

3. It is well to read over the words to 
be used for the next day's meditation the 
last thing at night. It is found that what 
is in the mind on going to sleep is apt to 
gain a foothold there and to recur, with a 
sense of familiarity, in the morning. 

4. It is best to have, if possible, a 
definite time for meditation, and early 
in the day, if that can be arranged. Some 
people make their meditation in the cars 
on their way to work. 



l86 MEDITATIONS. 

If one cannot make one's meditation 
until evening, it is best to make it early 
in the evening, but not the last thing at 
night, as any prolonged mental effort just 
before lying down tends to render sleep 
difficult or disturbed. 

5. When the time for meditation ar- 
rives it may prove helpful to begin by sit- 
ting quietly until all sense of hurry is 
gone, and relaxing every muscle, every 
nerve, and hushing the soul that it may 
hear ''the still small Voice" within. 

We are not to struggle, but trust. 
"My soul waiteth in stillness upon God, 
for of Him cometh my salvation." 

6. Then, if one is alone, it usually 
aids devotion to kneel down for the open- 
ing prayers, thought it would likely be 
too severe a strain to try to kneel for any 
long time. 

7. As a preparation for the medita- 
tion one should try to realize the pres- 
ence of God to ask forgiveness of Him for 
all sins of thought (especially day dream- 
ing) since the meditation of the day be- 
fore ; to promise to do whatever God di- 
rects, and to say the hymn ''Come Holy 
Ghost, our souls inspire." 



MEDITATIONS. 1 87 

8. Then it is well to write under the 
words from the Bible, a title for the medi- 
tation. For example, titles of the medita- 
tions on St. Mark 7, 32-34, might be as 
follows : 

I. Spiritual Deafness. 2. Dumb- 
ness in Prayer. 3. Intercession. 4. 
Necessity of Retirement (of meditation). 
5. The Contact of the Sacred Human- 
ity. 6. Love Giving Power to Pray. 7. 
Looking to God at the Beginning of Our 
Actions. 8. The Sympathy of Jesus. 
9. The Word of Power. 

9. Some persons will find an assist- 
ance in using their imaginations to picture 
the scene in which the words that furnish 
the theme of the meditation were spoken, 
or some appropriate scene from nature, 
and indicating this in a few words, thus : 

1. Spiritual Deafness. 

The deaf man led by his friends, look- 
ing anxiously about, wondering what 
they are saying. 

2. Dumbness in Prayer. 

Nature in its beauty, in the freshness 
of a summer morning, yearning to glorify 
God, but inarticulate save by the lips of 
man. 



l88 MEDITATIONS. 

10. Then one goes on to write down 
some truth that has come before one, or 
something bearing on one's own life that 
has been brought to mind. Thus, for the 
first meditation indicated above — "Why 
have I been so deaf to God's voice?" 

11. Then one goes on to write any- 
thing that comes to one, no matter how 
simple or childish it may seem. The aim 
should not be to try to- compose or origi- 
nate anything, but to listen eagerly and 
trustfully, and then believe that anything 
that comes to the mind is from God. 
One's own needs, not those of others, 
should be kept in view during these for- 
mal meditations and one's motto should 
be, 'T will hearken what the Lord 
God will say concerning me/' "Speak 
Lord, for Thy servant heareth," 

12. One is to go on writing, yet paus- 
ing often to utter such short prayers as 
"Oh God, I do desire to repent of my in- 
difference to Thy loving calls," "Oh God, 
I will to listen to Thee from this moment 
as long as I live ;" or, "O God, I am very 
sorry for my sins; I grieve over them 
with all my heart;" "Speak to me 



MEDITATIONS. 189 

dearest Lord, for Thou only hast the 
words of eternal life." 

13. One should take the whole time 
one has alloted by the watch, (at first a 
quarter of an hour will probably be long 
enough) so as to avoid all sense of hurry. 

14. Before the close one ought also 
to thank our Lord for His patience 
and love; to examine as to how well 
the time has been used, and whether 
one has been patient under dryness or in- 
voluntary vacancy of mind, and to form 
some resolution, for that day, and write 
it down. 

Thus, '^Res., To get time to stop and 
listen to God before I talk to M. to-day." 

15. There is reason for being careful 
to carry out this resolution, as it prob- 
ably comes from God, and it is well to ex- 
amine ourself about it at night to see if 
one has been faithful to it. If not we 
should not be discouraged, but should ask 
God humbly for grace to enable us to be 
more faithful the ensuing day. 

Step by step we shall surely "grow in 
grace" if we continue to try to do His 
will. 



Am m^W» 



OtC 8 1900 



!$• 



)6k 





m 




P 






iHfSS 


^^^aBS^iif^f^ 


K 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





017 053 704 A ^ 



"SKBg^ 






^:^-'ii 



«x»V' ' ■ ■ ■ ■ 



